Principal Data Scientist — Experimentation Leader (Hybrid)

Tripadvisor; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Tripadvisor seeks a Principal Data Scientist in London to lead experimentation strategy and measurement standards across products. You will set technical direction, mentor teams, and partner with Product, Engineering and Data Platform to raise speed and rigor in experiments.

You will own complex measurement questions, develop robust statistical methods, and ensure results align with platform health and growth goals for the organisation.

Qualifications

• Authoritative command of experimentation in all its forms, from experimental design and variance reduction to causal inference, bandits and Bayesian methods.
• Expert level proficiency in Python and SQL; deep experience with statistical modelling, quasi-experimentation, multi-arm bandits and ML techniques.
• Define, implement and operationalise crucial product and feature-level metrics from scratch.
• Partnership and enablement to raise both speed and quality of experimentation across teams.
• Ability to assess how product decisions affect platform health and growth over time.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical standard for experimentation across Product Data Science, from conventional A/B testing to quasi-experimental and Bayesian methods, and make it practical through protocols, frameworks and tooling.
• Partner with Product, Engineering and Data Platform teams to improve experimentation velocity without sacrificing rigour.
• Critically assess how experimentation and the decisions that follow it affect platform health and growth, and make that relationship visible to leadership.
• Own the measurement approach for Viator's most complex questions, where standard experimentation is insufficient and the method has to be designed rather than selected.
• Develop and validate the statistical methods the organisation relies on, including simulation-based verification that they behave correctly before teams depend on them.
• Act as the final technical authority on measurement validity, adjudicating disputed results and determining what the evidence does and does not support.
• Standardise recurring analytical and experimentation processes across the function, using automation and AI capabilities where they materially improve consistency, throughput or quality.
• Design and land methodological improvements with organisation-wide impact, such as variance reduction for difficult metrics and designs for low-traffic surfaces.
• Grow the technical depth of the wider team by reviewing designs, mentoring senior data scientists, and improving how people reason about measurement.
• Advise on where experimentation is the wrong tool and define what should be done instead.

Skills

Python

SQL

Statistics

Experimentation

Causal inference

Multi-armed bandits

Machine learning

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Statistics or related quantitative field

Tools

Statsig

Eppo

GrowthBook

Job description

Tripadvisor seeks a Principal Data Scientist in London to lead experimentation strategy and measurement standards across products. You will set technical direction, mentor teams, and partner with Product, Engineering and Data Platform to raise speed and rigor in experiments.

You will own complex measurement questions, develop robust statistical methods, and ensure results align with platform health and growth goals for the organisation.