About the Role
The MarTech Data Science Measurement team at Airbnb empowers the company to optimize marketing ROI by generating data-driven recommendations. They are instrumental in defining and advancing best practices for measuring and optimizing marketing impact, collaborating with Marketing, Finance, and Engineering to provide actionable recommendations and tools. Their tenets include being Actionable, Impactful, Balanced, Rigorous, Innovative, and Influential.
The Difference You Will Make
We are seeking an experienced (Contract) Sr. Data Scientist for a 24-month contract with deep expertise in marketing measurement, particularly in Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) and geo-based causal inference. The ideal candidate will possess strong statistical intuition and hands-on modeling experience to quantify the incremental impact of Airbnb's marketing investments across various channels and geographies. Proficiency in Python and familiarity with Bayesian frameworks are essential, along with the ability to translate complex measurement findings into clear, actionable recommendations for senior stakeholders.
A Typical Day
- Marketing Mix Modeling: Design, build, and maintain MMM models to estimate incremental channel contributions, including prior elicitation, adstock/saturation modeling, validation, and sensitivity analysis.
- Geo-Based Measurement: Develop and analyze geo-experiments (synthetic control, difference-in-differences) to measure marketing incrementality and validate MMM outputs.
- Measurement Infrastructure: Build and maintain data pipelines and automated measurement systems to ensure reproducibility and scalability.
- AI-Accelerated Prototyping: Utilize AI agent workflows to rapidly develop v0 prototypes and spec-driven model implementations, significantly reducing iteration time.
- Productionalization: Refine research prototypes into production-grade systems, adhering to proper unit testing, data validation, and code review standards.
- Insight Communication: Translate complex measurement findings into clear narratives and confident budget recommendations for Marketing and Finance stakeholders.
Your Expertise
- 5+ years of industry experience in a quantitative analysis role with a Master’s degree in a quantitative field (computer science, statistics etc.), or 2+ years of experience with a Ph.D.
- Deep, hands-on experience building and validating Marketing Mix Models in a production setting.
- Strong working knowledge of causal inference methods, including geo-experimentation and observational approaches.
- Proficiency in Python and R for statistical modeling, and SQL for data manipulation.
- Ability to communicate complex concepts clearly to stakeholders at varying technical levels.
- Proven track record of solving business problems through data science methods.
Preferred Expertise
- Passion for marketing and consumer science, with a desire to stay informed about the latest advances in the field.
- Familiarity with Bayesian modeling and its applications in marketing.
- Working knowledge of AI coding agents for accelerating prototyping, spec-driven development, and multi-agent workflows.
- Experience in developing end-to-end models for data-driven decision-making.