Principal Data Scientist at Reddit - $365K+ RSUs

reddit; United States; Remote; USD 313,000 - 365,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

RSUs

Medical insurance

401(k) with match

Generous vacation & parental leave

Job summary

Reddit is seeking a very senior Data Scientist to define measurement, modeling, and experimentation strategy for major consumer questions. You will partner with product, engineering, research, and community teams to turn ambiguous problems into clear scientific questions and durable analytics, guiding decisions at scale.

The role emphasizes leadership, mentorship, and the ability to influence data science direction across the organization, with a focus on long-term value and ecosystem health.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in at least one relevant area with breadth across related domains.
• Strong ability to model and optimize systems involving users, content, communities, and feedback loops.
• Experience framing ambiguous questions and translating evidence into action.

Responsibilities

• Set the scientific direction for high-impact consumer problems (discovery, relevance, personalization).
• Build durable understanding of users, intent, needs, and behaviors.
• Develop models/frameworks representing users, content, communities, and relationships over time for production use.

Skills

Recommender systems

Causal inference

Knowledge graphs

Deep learning (PyTorch/JAX)

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

Job description

Principal Data Scientist at Reddit - $365K+ RSUs — Remote

This is a Staff or Principal-level Data Scientist role at Reddit — one of the highest individual contributor tracks in data science. The compensation ($313K–$365K base + RSUs) sits well above market median for even Staff DS roles, which typically range $200K–$280K at comparable late-stage tech companies. The RSU component at a public company like Reddit adds meaningful upside.

Skills you'll develop and demonstrate:

• End-to-end consumer ecosystem modeling at massive scale (130M+ DAU)
• Causal inference and long-horizon experimentation design — highly transferable and in strong demand
• Cross-functional scientific leadership: setting org-wide learning agendas
• Deep learning for recommender systems (PyTorch/JAX) in a production consumer environment

Green flags: Reddit explicitly frames this as a "thought leader" role with significant autonomy to define scientific direction. The scope — spanning discovery, personalization, retention, and ecosystem health — is unusually broad and impactful. Mentoring and org influence are built into the role, which is key for anyone building toward a Principal or Distinguished Scientist title.

Potential considerations: The posting spans "more than one career level," suggesting calibration flexibility but also possible ambiguity around scope/title at hiring. The breadth of expected expertise (ML, causal inference, knowledge graphs, recommender systems) is extremely demanding — ensure you have genuine depth in at least 1–2 of these areas before applying.

Overall, this is a rare opportunity to do foundational consumer science work at a large-scale public platform with strong brand recognition in the data science community.

Reddit is a community of communities. It's built on shared interests, passion, and trust, and is home to the most open and authentic conversations on the internet. Every day, Reddit users submit, vote, and comment on the topics they care most about. With 100,000+ active communities and approximately 130 million daily active unique visitors, Reddit is one of the internet's largest sources of information. For more information, visit www.redditinc.com .

Reddit is a complex consumer ecosystem where users, content, communities, and conversations interact over time. We are looking for a very senior data science thought leader to shape how Reddit understands and improves that ecosystem for the user/consumer flywheel.

This role will define the measurement, modeling, and experimentation strategy for major Consumer questions: how users discover value, form habits, and deepen engagement; how we understand and serve user intent; how content and communities evolve; and how our systems create durable value for users, contributors, communities, and Reddit.

The ideal candidate will bring deep expertise in one or more areas of consumer science, such as:

• Recommender systems and information retrieval
• User modeling, personalization, lifecycle, LTV, or optimization
• Content, community, or ecosystem modeling
• Knowledge graphs and representations of users, content, and communities
• Causal inference, experimentation, and long-term consumer measurement

You will partner with leaders across Product, Engineering, Research, and Community to turn ambiguous consumer problems into clear scientific questions, durable analytical systems, and decisions that improve Reddit at scale.

What You'll Do

• Set the scientific direction for high-impact Consumer problems spanning discovery, relevance, personalization, user growth, retention, content, and communities.
• Build a durable understanding of users, their intent, their needs, and the behaviors that lead to lasting value.
• Develop models and frameworks that represent users, content, communities, and their relationships over time for use in systems that operate at scale.
• Determine how to measure consumer and ecosystem health when objectives compete and short-term engagement may differ from long-term value.
• Set learning agendas and steer experimentation strategy to distinguish durable improvement from temporary metric movement.
• Build state-of-the-art measurement systems to evaluate heterogeneous effects across user personas, acquisition cohorts, platforms, content types, and community stages, and guide their actionability in production environments.
• Ensure coherence around ecosystem interactions including feedback loops, selection effects, interference, distribution shift, content supply, and other ecosystem risks.
• Translate complex technical findings into clear product and business decisions.
• Develop exceptional scientists through mentoring and influence data science org health and direction.

Requirements

• Deep expertise in at least one relevant area, with the breadth and curiosity to work across adjacent domains.
• A deep understanding of how to model and optimize systems involving users, content, communities, and feedback loops.
• Ability to frame and lead the most ambiguous questions, identify the most important uncertainties, and develop a rigorous path from evidence to action.
• Exceptional technical judgment across model design, objective selection, validation, experimentation, and production tradeoffs.
• Advanced knowledge of modern machine-learning methods for behavioral and content data, including representation learning and sequential or contextual models. Experience with deep-learning frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX.
• Experience working across Product, Engineering, Research, and other partner teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and explain technical ideas clearly.
• Significant experience applying data science, machine learning, statistics, experimentation, or causal inference to complex consumer products.

Pay Transparency:

This job posting may span more than one career level.

In addition to base salary, this job is eligible to receive equity in the form of restricted stock units, and depending on the position offered, it may also be eligible to receive a commission. Additionally, Reddit offers a wide range of benefits to U.S.-based employees, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k) program with employer match, generous time off for vacation, and parental leave. To learn more, please visit https://www.redditinc.com/careers/ .

To provide greater transparency to candidates, we share base salary ranges for all US-based job postings regardless of state. We set standard base pay ranges for all roles based on function, level, and country location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including skills, depth of work experience, and relevant licenses/credentials, and may vary from the amounts listed below.

The base salary range for this position is: $313,000 — $365,100 USD

In select roles and locations, the interviews will be recorded, transcribed, and summarized by artificial intelligence (AI). You will have the opportunity to opt out of recording, transcription, and summarization prior to any scheduled interviews.

During the interview, we will collect the following categories of personal information: Identifiers, Professional and Employment-Related Information, Sensory Information (audio/video recording), and any other categories of personal information you choose to share with us. We will use this information to evaluate your application for employment or an independent contractor role, as applicable. We will not sell your personal information or disclose it to any third party for their marketing purposes. We will delete any recording of your interview promptly after making a hiring decision. For more information about how we will handle your personal information, including our retention of it, please refer to our Candidate Privacy Policy for Potential Employees and Contractors .

Reddit is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and is committed to building a workforce representative of the diverse communities we serve. Reddit is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If, due to a disability, you need an accommodation during the interview process, please let your recruiter know.

Is this Reddit data science role fully remote? The job posting does not explicitly specify remote or on-site, but it is listed as a US-based position. Reddit has supported remote work for senior roles historically, but candidates should confirm remote policy during the interview process. What is the salary range for this position? The base salary range is $313,000 to $365,100 USD annually. The role also includes equity in the form of restricted stock units (RSUs) and may include commission eligibility depending on the specific position offered. What level is this data science role at Reddit? The posting notes it may span more than one career level, indicating it could be calibrated at Staff or Principal Data Scientist depending on the candidate's experience and depth of expertise. What technical skills are required for this role? Candidates need advanced knowledge of machine learning methods including representation learning, sequential/contextual models, and experience with PyTorch or JAX. Expertise in areas like recommender systems, causal inference, user modeling, or knowledge graphs is essential. What benefits does Reddit offer for this role? Reddit offers medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) with employer match, generous vacation time off, and parental leave, in addition to equity compensation via RSUs.

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