Lead Data Scientist

San Francisco, CA, United States

Philo: TV on the Internet (TVoIP)

At Philo, we’re a group of technology and product people who set out to build the future of television, marrying the best in modern technology with the most compelling medium ever invented — in short, we’re building the TV experience that we’ve always wanted for ourselves. In practice this means leveraging cloud delivery, modern tech stacks, machine learning, and hand-crafted native app experiences on all of our platforms. We aim to deliver a rock solid experience on the streaming basics, while cooking up next generation multi-screen and multi-user playback experiences.

Data Science at Philo

Data underpins everything we do at Philo: making informed business decisions; analyzing and improving the quality of our streaming experience; running product experiments to optimize our signup flows; and making it easier for our users to find the perfect thing to watch. On the Data Science team, we’re looking for someone who is comfortable working on a variety of ad auction and placement optimization problems, using experimentation to improve our ads systems, and helping to lead our team in balancing monetization and quality of experience considerations across our streaming service. You’ll be working closely with other data scientists, analysts, and engineers to build and deploy solutions directly for our service.

We are passionate about problem-solving and providing data-informed insights for the entire company using both cutting-edge techniques and proven practices in close collaboration with every department. To complete our work we build on modern open-source tools including dbt, GrowthBook, Robyn, Superset, and PyTorch as well as SaaS tools such as Segment, SageMaker, AWS Glue, Mode, Avo, and BigEye.

Some of the recent projects our Data Science team members have worked on include:

Modeling to determine which early product behaviors predict conversion

Running experiments to evaluate the impact of alternative ad bidding strategies

Building data models for analysis of lifetime value of customers including ad revenue

Price sensitivity research and competitive market analyses

Qualifications

Philo is seeking a Senior Advertising Data Scientist with demonstrated understanding of statistical modeling, A/B/n experimentation practices, SQL, and experience independently developing data driven insights. This data scientist will have the opportunity to leverage massive structured, unstructured, transactional, and real-time data sets from a variety of sources, analyze financial and customer usage patterns, and make actionable recommendations to product, marketing, engineering, and business development teams.

In this role, the Senior Advertising Data Scientist will support the entire product development lifecycle for our programmatic sales side advertising systems (that is, the ad inventory we sell), from feature ideation and opportunity sizing to measurement and experiment design and from causal analysis and post-launch learning to the next development cycle. Senior Data Scientists at Philo contribute to mentorship and leadership on the Data team whether they are people managers or individual contributors. The individual in this role will be expected to balance individual contribution (~80% of time) with people management responsibilities.

Responsibilities:

Build a deep understanding of how subscribers use Philo on each of our streaming platforms, how that usage influences advertising performance and defining the metrics to evaluate new features in our advertising systems

Own analytics and tracking plans within several development work streams, from metric definition and data instrumentation design to ongoing reporting and research

Iteratively improve our experimentation methods and establish best practices for experiments in a live advertising auction environment

Establish curated dashboards that will serve as the primary source by which we evaluate the performance of features

Run queries to support ad-hoc product questions and create Mode dashboards and other visualizations for stakeholders

Own your analytics projects, proactively identify issues and opportunities, test hypotheses, and propose solutions

Collaborate with groups company-wide (e.g. business development, advertising operations, marketing, and support) on KPIs, including lifetime value, retention, win-back, and content consumption metrics

Key Qualifications:

10+ years of experience in a Data Science role, preferably with experience managing analysts, engineers, or data scientists. Demonstrated ability to influence product roadmaps and business decisions with data

Proven expertise in experimental design (including but not limited to A/B testing), principles of causal inference, and statistical techniques

Experience with programmatic DSP/SSP advertising systems

Experience with relational databases and SQL

Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain and present analytical methodology and results to non-technical audiences

Expert with statistical analysis in either R or Python

Strong analytics fundamentals – a degree in statistics, economics, a related field, or similar professional experience

Experience in writing production-quality code in R/Python, productionizing data models and statistical models with tools such as Git, Sagemaker, and dbt, and using software engineering best practices around version control, review, and automated testing

More about Philo

We strive to build engaging and easy to use streaming apps across a large number of platforms (Android Mobile, Android tablets, Android TV, Amazon FireTV, Roku, iOS, Apple TV, Samsung, and web), while delivering a large variety of content to our users.

Today there are over 60 channels included in our basic package -- our lineup includes many popular cable networks, like A&E, Accuweather, Animal Planet, AXS TV, BBC America, BET, Cheddar, ComedyCentral, CMT, Discovery Channel, Food Network, Game Show Network, Hallmark, HGTV, IFC, INSP,Lifetime, MTV, Newsy, Nickelodeon, OWN, Paramount Network, Sundance, TV One, Vice and VH1. We also offer premium add-on channels from Starz and Epix, and we’re always adding more content!

We’re a company that puts people first — both our subscribers and our team. At Philo, our philosophy is to empower our colleagues to do their best work while supporting each other in pursuing shared goals. We value pragmatism, pride in our work, and passion. We believe in having transparency and openness across all parts of the company. We are committed to diversity and inclusion as we grow the Philo team and shape the future of TV -- we believe that a diverse set of voices and perspectives on our team enables us to innovate faster and create the best experience for our subscribers.

Philo is headquartered in San Francisco, with additional offices in New York and Cambridge, MA. Our leadership team includes a cofounder of Facebook as well as alums of Meraki and HBO. Philo is backed by NEA and industry partners including Discovery, Viacom, AMC, and A&E.

Status: Full-time

Location: San Francisco, CA

Compensation: Includes annual salary between $180K-$230K depending on experience and location, company stock options, and health benefits.

We value a diverse and inclusive workplace and we welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, skills, and perspectives. Philo is an equal opportunity employer. We believe that everyone does their best work when they are supported by each other and the company, and we offer a generous set of benefits to make sure the Philo team is happy and healthy. Here is a sampling of the benefits we offer our team:

Full health, dental and vision coverage for you and your family

401(k) plan with employer contributions (we match 100% of deferrals up to 3% of pay and 50% of the next 2% of pay)

Flexible working hours

Up to 20 weeks of fully paid parental leave

Unlimited paid time off for vacation and sick leave

$2,000 annual vacation bonus (we pay you to take a two week vacation)

$5,250 annually for professional development and educational assistance

$1,250 annual home office + TV stipend during first year of employment ($250 annually thereafter)

$500/month ($6,000/year) bonus for employees who commit to working at least 3 days per week in our offices, plus generous commuter benefits ($315/month towards transit, rideshare, bike rental, or parking at our HQ office in San Francisco)

Free Gympass subscription — an all-in-one corporate benefit that gives employees the largest selection of gyms, studios, classes, training and wellness apps

Dog-friendly office

And much more!

For California Residents: Philo’s CCPA Notice at Collection – Employees, Applicants, Owners, Directors, Officers and Contractors

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.