Head of Data Science 1063 views

Medium’s mission is to help people deepen their understanding of the world and discover ideas that matter. They are creating the best place for reading and writing on the internet—a place where today’s smartest writers, thinkers, experts, and storytellers can share big, interesting ideas.

Data Science is the central team responsible for every step of translating data into insights that improve Medium for readers and writers by enabling the best decisions.

They are looking for a Data Science leader that empowers others to make creative and strategic decisions. You will build tools that remove barriers to entry and empower others to do analysis. Their definition of tools is wide. It can be anything from a tool that lets them run prescriptive modeling on reader retention, to a thinking framework around how to determine if a story is of high quality or not.

What will you do?

• • You will build and be responsible for the Data Science organization at Medium
  • You will identify and construct the metrics to measure their objectives, build data pipelines, support Looker integration, and craft dashboards
  • You will educate partners, and make data-informed recommendations and actions where needed
  • You will craft and present a “state of the system” presentation every other week to keep the company apprised of the insights Medium’s data is revealing. You are the gatekeeper and guide of how they measure and understand their sophisticated system.
  • Your team will work with a broad range of cross-functional leaders in engineering, product, design, editorial, finance, and the executive team to understand how their readers and writers interact with their products and where the major opportunities for growth are. Together, you and your team will help the company and its departments define priorities and turn analysis into recommendations and actions that lead to continued growth rates.

Who You Are

• • You are a forward-thinking individual with a growth plan for the Data Science team at Medium
  • You are a hardworking leader with a strong desire to develop and hire amazing managers and teams
  • You are committed to building diverse and inclusive organizations; a facilitator who encourages voices from all sides and backgrounds
  • You have a deep understanding of business modeling and how data science informs business decisions
  • You have a strong customer focus and the ability to communicate complex or challenging messages effectively to a variety of audiences
  • You have a desire to build a team culture that balances practicality with rigor, skepticism with optimism, modeling data-driven decision making for all of the Medium
  • You are a teacher who can help others define the best way to get answers to their priority business challenges

Requirements

• • You have deep technical expertise in Data Science/Applied Research and related fields, finance, and business modeling is a bonus
  • You are a recognized leader with over 10 years of successful Data Science team management in a dynamic start-up growth environments (ideally tech/media companies)
  • You have the ability to instill a user-focused attitude within the data science organization, making sure they deeply understand their users, experiment and validate hypotheses before building
  • You have executive-level presence and decision making experience
  • You have balanced the demands and expectations of a broad and diverse set of partners, and have worked collaboratively at multiple levels of the organization to get things done
  • You have strong recruiting and people management skills, as well as experience mentoring teams and managers to high performance
  • You have the ability to articulate a compelling vision for the future of data science, the trends within Medium’s user model, and the skills to guide the team to execute on this vision
  • You have expert-level communication and collaboration skills; you model behavior by leading by example through and resolving inter-team conflict
  • You have the ability to lead within a lean, highly effective organization, making strategic trade-offs, and prioritize effectively