Data Scientists at SpotHero create data products fueled by machine learning under the hood. Over the course of your career at SpotHero, you will act in an end-to-end capacity to own and mature a portfolio of data science solutions. You will work across teams to understand needs, create data science solutions, advise stakeholders, and design advanced experiments to validate ideas and models. You will also be supported by our Business Analytics, Data Engineering, and Rates Squad.

Currently we have an opening for one person at the Sr. Data Scientist I or Sr. Data Scientist II level. The level will be determined over the course of the interview process. We are also particularly interested in candidates who have experience in working within production systems and/or product experimentation.

As a Sr. Data Scientist I, you will own solving entire problems. You will work with Product Managers, Product Designers, Engineers, and business domain experts to understand the problem, needs, and success measures. You will decompose complex problems into a sequence of answering smaller questions and reaching milestones. You will also offer support to other members of the squad by answering questions they have, researching new methods, reviewing their work, sharing your perspectives to problems their solving, and learning more about our business / industry.

As a Sr. Data Scientist II, you will be expected to carve out a portfolio of investigations and insights based around a broad need of ours. This will involve pairing with product managers and/or product designers to conduct discoveries to understand more about the domain stakeholder needs. You will author problem statements with actionable hypotheses based on your discoveries. After this, you will prototype solutions, work with stakeholders to test these prototypes, and improve / iterate on them as needed. If the acceptance criteria are met, you will then mature the solution into production working with our Machine Learning Engineers.

Some examples of our broad themes include:

1. Pricing: Can we measure price elasticity by analyzing our historical data? Is it possible to measure price elasticity at a given parking facility? What factors influence price elasticity?
2. Personalization: How do drivers use our app and can we glean any insights about their buying preferences or parking intent? What opportunities are there to personalize the search experience? To what extent do price and distance alone explain why drivers choose one facility over another?
3. Business Operations: What is the cost of acquisition and lifetime value of our customers? How can we optimize marketing spend to reduce the cost of acquisition? What markets should we expand in?

In addition to focusing on one of these themes, you will be expected help with ad hoc requests that arise from stakeholders (such as advancing our dynamic pricing solution), provide constructive feedback on squad deliverables, and suggest how we can improve as a team. Everyone on the Data Science squad also invests 20% of our time proposing and investigating our own questions.

Overall, this role is a great opportunity if you are an experienced data scientist who is looking to put into practice the skills and experiences you’ve learned to carve out a portfolio of data science products. This is also an opportunity that will appeal to those who want to learn from a diverse team of subject matter experts spanning various engineering, business, and product domains.

Key Responsibilities:

Modelling & Engineering (45%)

• Own the implementation, deployment, and maintenance of data science models and design experiments to validate their performance
• Apply and suggest improvements to our technologies and best practices so that we can validate our ideas faster and create scalable solutions
• Give constructive feedback on squad deliverables, workflows, and our tech stack to improve the quality of our work
• Write concise, modular code that handles data cleaning, data aggregation, data exploration and statistical or machine learning modeling
• Keep a pulse on and surface relevant industry news, best practices, models, and technologies that could be used to solve our problems

Business & Storytelling (20%)

• Write problem statements that breakdown broad, ambiguous, complex needs into actionable questions and hypotheses
• Present deliverables to interdisciplinary audiences with an appropriate balance of technical and business acumen
• Proactively share your recommendations around next steps and effort estimates
• Author documentation that is clear and accessible to its intended audience
• You help create a data science community by sharing your thoughts on data science opportunities, speaking at sprint demos, and representing SpotHero at external conferences

Data (20%)

• Prepare and structure custom data sets spanning data from across SpotHero for bespoke analysis and authoring proof of concepts
• Incorporate and expand on existing data models
• Analyze large amounts of data to uncover trends, patterns, and insights
• Author new KPI’s that help us size opportunities and benchmark current performance

Statistics / Experimentation (15%)

• Design and take feedback on creating experiments to test and evaluate the performance of models
• Review and give feedback on experiment proposals and analysis

Qualifications:

• Must have a portfolio of data science use cases you have created and/or contributed to that shows your breadth and depth as a Data Scientist. Ideally, this portfolio is a balance between early proof of concepts through to late-stage production solutions
• Exposure to facilitating discoveries to understand more about a need and experience contributing to writing problem statements, hypotheses, and/or business cases around data science use cases
• Comfortable with communicating with a diverse group of stakeholders on a variety of business and technical subjects
• Experience contributing to software (pipelines, services, and client libraries) that is run in Docker containers, automatically tested on a continuous integration (CI) system, and versioned in git
• Working knowledge of Data Science analysis and modeling packages in Python including Pandas, Scikit-Learn, NumPy
• Good understanding of a SQL dialect to query, read, and write relational data
• Exposure to MLOps platforms and technologies such as Databricks, Sagemaker, Domino, ClearML, Pachyderm, etc.

Nice to have:

• Demonstrated experiences with designing and conducting experiments to evaluate machine learning models
• Experience with multiple data platforms and tools (eg. S3, Redshift, Airflow)
• Experience using distributed systems (eg. Apache Spark, Presto, Dask)
• Experience writing shell scripts, Makefiles, or other configurations to glue together these components
• Familiarity with BI solutions like Looker (preferred), Tableau, Sisense, etc.

 What we offer:

• Career game changer – a truly unique experience to work for a fast-growing startup in a role with unlimited potential for growth. 
• Competitive benefits – 
• In the US: we cover up to 95% of Medical Premiums, 50% of Dental & Vision Premiums, company sponsored Life Insurance, 401K + company match, and generous parental leave. 
• In Canada: we offer Medical (prescription drug and paramedical coverage), Dental, Vision, Life Insurance, STD and LTD. 
• Flexible, unlimited PTO policy and supportive work/life balance – we value and support every Hero on the team, and create space for life!
• Annual parking stipend (duh- we help people park!)
• The opportunity to collaborate with creative, innovative, and passionate people in a casual, yet highly productive, atmosphere.
• Our award-winning culture has received recognition from Built In’s 2021 Moxie Awards, as a 2021 Best Places to Work in Chicago, Top Company Culture by Entrepreneur, 2022 Best Places to Work in Chicago by BuiltIn, and recipients of the Best Company Culture, Best Company for Women, and Best Company for Diversity awards from Comparably! 

At SpotHero, we Respect Fellow Drivers by providing an inclusive interview experience for everyone, including people with disabilities. We are happy to provide reasonable accommodations to candidates in need of individualized support during the hiring process. Please let our team know of your need when you apply or as you begin interviewing with our team.

SpotHero is an equal opportunity employer. We know that a diverse workforce is the strongest workforce, and are committed to building and supporting an inclusive environment for all.

Additionally, because we want to Remember to Signal, if you choose to provide us personal information in connection with a job application, please review our Applicant Privacy Notice which provides details about what information we collect and process about you in order to consider your candidacy.

PLEASE NOTE: This position is ineligible for visa sponsorship. To be considered for this role, you must be legally authorized to work in the US and not require sponsorship for employment now or in the future.