Data Scientist

Arena; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation and equity

Comprehensive health and wellness benefits

Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI

Culture of transparency and community impact

Job summary

Arena in San Francisco is looking for an experienced Data Scientist to analyze large datasets and uncover insights about AI model behavior. You will collaborate with machine learning researchers to design experiments and improve the reliability of evaluation systems.

The ideal candidate will have over 6 years of data science experience and strong proficiency in Python alongside statistical modeling expertise. Competitive compensation and benefits offered.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in data science, ML analytics, or applied research.
• Strong proficiency in Python, with experience in Pandas, NumX, and Spark.
• Expertise in statistical modeling, causal inference, and experimental design.
• Experience reasoning about data distributions and sample quality.
• Strong communication skills to collaborate with ML researchers.

Responsibilities

• Analyze complex datasets to uncover patterns and causal relationships.
• Design experiments to validate hypotheses about model performance.
• Build analysis pipelines using Python and related tools.
• Collaborate with ML researchers to design relevant metrics.
• Develop frameworks that explain model behaviors.

Skills

Data science experience

Machine Learning analytics

Python proficiency

Statistical modeling

Causal inference

Experimental design

Strong communication skills

Tools

Pandas

NumX

Spark

Job description

About Arena Intelligence

Arena Intelligence is the open platform for evaluating how AI models perform in the real world. Created by researchers from UC Berkeley’s SkyLab, our mission is to measure and advance the frontier of AI for real-world use.

Millions of people use Arena Intelligence each month to explore how frontier systems perform — and we use our community’s feedback to build transparent, rigorous, and human-centered model evaluations. Leading enterprises and AI labs rely on our evaluations to understand real-world reliability, alignment, and impact. Our leaderboards are the gold standard for AI performance — trusted by leaders across the AI community and shaping the global conversation on model reliability and progress.

We’re a team of researchers, engineers, academics, and builders from places like UC Berkeley, Google, Stanford, DeepMind, and Discord. We seek truth, move fast, and value craftsmanship, curiosity, and impact over hierarchy. We’re building a company where thoughtful, curious people from all backgrounds can do their best work. Everyone on our team is a deep expert in their field — our office radiates excellence, energy, and focus.

About the Role

As a Data Scientist you’ll explore and reason about the data that powers millions of AI evaluations each week. You’ll generate and test hypotheses, identify causal relationships, and uncover insights that help us understand how frontier models behave in the real world.
You’ll collaborate with ML researchers and engineers to design experiments, analyze large-scale datasets, and build statistical frameworks that improve the reliability and interpretability of our AI evaluation systems. We are considering candidates who are senior level or higher for this role.

You’ll

• Explore and analyze large, complex datasets to uncover patterns, biases, and causal relationships in model behavior and system performance.

• Formulate hypotheses about data quality, evaluation outcomes, and model performance — then design experiments to validate or refute them.

• Build reproducible analysis pipelines using Python, Pandas, NumX, and Spark to process and interrogate large-scale data.

• Partner with ML researchers and engineers to design metrics and analyses that evaluate how models perform across domains, prompts, and tasks.

• Develop causal reasoning frameworks and statistical methods that help explain why models behave as they do — not just how well they perform.

• Communicate insights (for example, via blog posts) clearly to technical and non-technical partners, informing both research direction and infrastructure improvements.

You’ll have

• 6+ years of experience in data science, ML analytics, or applied research, preferably in AI, ML, or large-scale data environments.

• Strong proficiency in Python, with deep experience in Pandas, NumX, and distributed frameworks like Spark.

• Expertise in statistical modeling, causal inference, and experimental design.

• Experience reasoning about data distributions, sample quality, and the effects of data distribution shifts.

• Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate closely with ML researchers and engineers.

• (Bonus) Background in AI model evaluation.

• (Bonus) Experience working with LLM outputs (for example, LLM-as-a-judge), embeddings, or other large-scale model artifacts.

• (Bonus) Experience with A/B testing.

What we offer

• We offer competitive compensation and equity aligned to the markets where our team members are based. The base salary range will depend on the candidate’s permanent work location.

• Comprehensive health and wellness benefits, including medical, dental, vision, and additional support programs.

• The opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI with a small, mission-driven team

• A culture that values transparency, trust, and community impact

Come help build the space where anyone can explore and help shape the future of AI.

Arena Intelligence provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.