Principal Data Scientist, User Ecosystem

Details

Reddit is seeking a very senior data science thought leader to shape how the company understands and improves its consumer ecosystem. The role will define measurement, modeling, and experimentation strategies for major consumer questions involving user discovery, habit formation, engagement, user intent, content, communities, and long-term value.

Relevant areas of expertise include recommender systems and information retrieval; user modeling, personalization, lifecycle, lifetime value, and optimization; content, community, and ecosystem modeling; knowledge graphs and representations; and causal inference, experimentation, and long-term consumer measurement.

Responsibilities

• Set the scientific direction for high-impact consumer problems spanning discovery, relevance, personalization, user growth, retention, content, and communities.
• Build a durable understanding of users, their intent, their needs, and the behaviors that lead to lasting value.
• Develop models and frameworks representing users, content, communities, and their relationships over time for use in systems operating at scale.
• Determine how to measure consumer and ecosystem health when objectives compete and short-term engagement may differ from long-term value.
• Set learning agendas and steer experimentation strategy to distinguish durable improvement from temporary metric movement.
• Build state-of-the-art measurement systems to evaluate heterogeneous effects across user personas, acquisition cohorts, platforms, content types, and community stages, and guide their actionability in production environments.
• Ensure coherence around ecosystem interactions, including feedback loops, selection effects, interference, distribution shift, content supply, and other ecosystem risks.
• Translate complex technical findings into clear product and business decisions.
• Develop exceptional scientists through mentoring and influence data science organization health and direction.
• Partner with leaders across Product, Engineering, Research, and Community.

Requirements

• Deep expertise in at least one relevant area, with the breadth and curiosity to work across adjacent domains.
• Deep understanding of modeling and optimizing systems involving users, content, communities, and feedback loops.
• Ability to frame and lead ambiguous questions, identify important uncertainties, and develop a rigorous path from evidence to action.
• Exceptional technical judgment across model design, objective selection, validation, experimentation, and production tradeoffs.
• Advanced knowledge of modern machine-learning methods for behavioral and content data, including representation learning and sequential or contextual models.
• Experience with deep-learning frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX.
• Experience working across Product, Engineering, Research, and other partner teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and explain technical ideas clearly.
• Significant experience applying data science, machine learning, statistics, experimentation, or causal inference to complex consumer products.

Benefits

In addition to base salary, this position is eligible for equity in the form of restricted stock units and may be eligible for a commission depending on the position offered. Benefits for U.S.-based employees include medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) program with employer match, generous vacation time, and parental leave. Reddit is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans.

The base salary range for this position is $313,000–$365,100 USD. The role is remote in the United States. In select roles and locations, interviews may be recorded, transcribed, and summarized by artificial intelligence, with an option to opt out before scheduled interviews.