Lead Data Scientist, Product

Descript; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous healthcare package

401k matching program

Catered lunches

Flexible vacation time

Job summary

Descript is seeking a founding Product Data Scientist in San Francisco to shape growth strategies and enhance experimentation culture. You will conduct in-depth analyses, identify monetization opportunities, and collaborate with product and engineering teams.

Ideal candidates have 5–8 years of experience, strong SQL skills, and a growth mindset. A generous benefits package, including health insurance and flexible vacation time, is offered. Remote and hybrid roles are available, promoting a collaborative work environment.

Qualifications

• 5-8 years of experience in a Data Scientist or similar role.
• 3+ years working in a growth function.
• Strong business and product intuition to identify opportunities.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Conduct in-depth analysis to shape product strategy.
• Develop understanding of the product ecosystem.
• Own success metrics and opportunity sizing.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams on experiments.

Skills

Data analysis

Statistical analysis

SQL

A/B testing

Programming (Python or R)

Communication

Collaboration

Growth mindset

Job description

Our vision is to build the next generation platform to enable easy and fast creation of audio and video content powered by cutting‑edge AI. Building a revolutionary way to record, transcribe, edit, and mix spoken audio and video comes with a series of unique challenges and requires solving hard and complex problems.

As a founding product data scientist on the team, you will play a critical role in shaping our growth strategy, up‑leveling our experimentation culture, and scaling our business.

What You’ll Do

• Conduct in‑depth analysis to shape product PLG motion and B2B strategy.
• Develop deep understanding of the product ecosystem and identify opportunities to drive activation, engagement, and monetization through actionable insights.
• Leveraging AI tools to build and maintain self‑service analytics enabling stakeholders to access reliable metrics, size opportunities, design experiments, and interpret results independently.
• Improve execution rigor of product teams by owning success metrics and opportunity sizing.
• Brain buddy with product and engineering teams for day‑to‑day experiment design, deployment, and analysis. Provide creative solutions for tricky experimentation scenarios.
• Evolve experimentation culture and practices within the company.

What You Bring

• 5–8 years of experience in a Data Scientist or similar role.
• 3+ years working in a growth function.
• Strong business and product intuition to identify opportunities in the growth ecosystem.
• Strong knowledge of statistical analysis and A/B tests.
• Strong SQL skills and proficient in at least one programming language such as Python or R.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Curiosity, savviness to navigate in a dynamic environment, and a growth mindset.
• Having worked at a fast‑growing start‑up is a plus.

The base salary range for this role is $200,000 - $250,000/year. Final offer amounts will carefully consider multiple factors, including prior experience, expertise, location, level, and may vary from the amount above.

Descript is the special company that's in possession of both product market fit and the raw materials (passionate user community, great product, large market) for growth, but is still early enough that each new employee has a measurable influence on the direction of the company.

Benefits include a generous healthcare package, 401k matching program, catered lunches, and flexible vacation time. Our headquarters are located in the Mission District of San Francisco, CA. We're hiring for a mix of remote roles and hybrid roles. For those who are remote, we have a handful of opportunities throughout the year for in person collaboration. For our hybrid roles, we're flexible, and you're an adult—we don't expect or mandate that you're in the office every day. We do believe there are valuable and serendipitous moments of discovery and collaboration that come from working together in person.

Descript is an equal opportunity workplace—we are dedicated to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status. We believe in actively building a team rich in diverse backgrounds, experiences, and opinions to better allow our employees, products, and community to thrive.