Staff Scientist, Airports and Travel
Postmates
Qualifications
Education
Bachelor's or M.S. degree in Economics, Operations Research, or a related quantitative field (e.g., Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science with a strong modeling focus).
Experience Requirements
Required
7+ years of relevant industry experience in a Product Data Science, Applied Science, or equivalent role, with a proven track record of driving organizational impact.
Required Skills
Technical Skills
Soft Skills
Full Job Description
Data Scientist, Data Science in San Francisco, California - Full Time
About the RoleAs a Staff Scientist, you will serve as a strategic thought leader and "Problem Finder" for a high-growth business segment focused on the end-to-end traveler experience. This domain presents complex challenges, as user behavior often spans multiple markets, products, and timeframes, requiring non-trivial attribution, measurement, and experimentation frameworks. You will leverage your technical mastery and strategic influence to proactively identify, frame, and size the most ambiguous, high-leverage growth opportunities for the organization. This role demands sustained, high-leverage impact across the organization, setting the long-term technical direction for data science, and ensuring all critical decisions are grounded in rigorous data science.
What the Candidate Will Do- Strategic Problem Finding: Proactively identify, frame, and quantify the most ambiguous, high-leverage growth opportunities for the business, translating them into actionable, organization-level projects.
- Lead End-to-End Solutions: Identify business opportunities and transform them into rigorous, data-driven solutions to build the next generation of end-to-end experiences for Uber travelers by partnering with engineering, product, and operations to co-drive execution.
- Advanced Experimentation Leadership: Design, own, and rigorously analyze complex experimentation frameworks, including those dealing with multi-market attribution, to provide definitive launch recommendations and set the scientific agenda for the team.
- Infrastructure & Measurement Ownership: Define and champion the adoption of canonical business health metrics across the organization, partnering with data engineering to build scalable, reliable data and measurement infrastructure.
- Executive Influence: Synthesize complex data into clear, persuasive narratives and communicate strategic recommendations to senior leadership (Director/VP level), mobilizing cross-functional alignment across product, engineering, and operations.
- Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner deeply with engineering, product, and operations to identify impactful opportunities and co-drive execution from inception to delivery. Act as a scientific thought leader, mentoring junior scientists and influencing technical strategy across the organization.
- Technical Mentorship: Act as a scientific mentor, elevating the analytical and experimentation bar for junior and mid-level data scientists on the team.
- Bachelor's or M.S. degree in Economics, Operations Research, or a related quantitative field (e.g., Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science with a strong modeling focus).
- 7+ years of relevant industry experience in a Product Data Science, Applied Science, or equivalent role, with a proven track record of driving organizational impact.
- Strong ability to understand user behavior from data, identify and size opportunities, and drive solutions end to end.
- Expert proficiency with Python, Pandas and SQL for large-scale data analysis, modeling, and production-level code collaboration.
- Expertise in advanced experimentation (A/B testing, causal inference) and applying statistical rigor to complex business problems.
- Exceptional communication skills, with proven experience in synthesizing complex data into persuasive narratives for both technical and executive audiences.
- PhD in Economics, Operations Research, or a related quantitative field (e.g., Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science with a strong modeling focus).
- Experience leading multi-quarter analytical workstreams with demonstrated, measurable impact at an organizational level.
- Expertise in two-sided marketplace dynamics (e.g., pricing, supply-demand balancing) and the measurement of network effects or cross-market spillovers.
- Proven track record of designing and analyzing advanced user behavior related experiments to design mass market products.
- Experienced in using AI/Agentic tools to accelerate data retrieval, analysis, and experimentation workflows, achieving a 10x improvement in speed and impact.
- Prior experience in a high-growth, high-scale technology or marketplace domain.





