Senior Data Scientist, Artist-First AI Music lab

Spotify; Washington (District of Columbia); Hybrid; USD 145,000 - 207,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Six-month parental leave

401(k) retirement plan

Monthly meal allowance

23 paid days off

Paid holidays

Paid sick leave

Job summary

Spotify's Artist-First AI Music Lab is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to lead measurement and insights for generative music experiences, shaping how creators, listeners, and rights holders engage with AI music.

You will design large-scale analyses, work with engineers and researchers to embed evaluation signals into model development, and translate behavioral signals into strategic recommendations that guide product direction across teams.

Qualifications

• Proven hands-on experience in advanced analytics or data science.
• Experience with LLM evaluation, user-generated content, or complex user behavior.
• Ability to translate quantitative signals into actionable insights for executives and teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead foundational measurement and insights work for generative music experiences.
• Design and run large-scale analyses and evaluations of generative music systems.
• Partner with Engineers and AI Researchers to integrate evaluation signals into model development loops.
• Identify behavioral and market dynamics shaping consumer demand and creator participation; translate into strategic recommendations.
• Build scalable metrics and decision systems defining what good looks like for AI music (credibility, delight, safety, alignment, ecosystem trust).
• Create narratives that shape product strategy and long-term priorities across Spotify.
• Develop datasets, dashboards, and measurement systems to monitor product health and impact.
• Collaborate with Product, Design, Research, Legal, Trust & Safety, Marketing, Policy, and Licensing teams.

Skills

Python

SQL

Data analysis

Experiment design

Tools

Cursor

Copilot

Job description

The Music Mission team owns Spotify's end to end proposition for music creators and the experiences they create for fans. The team is dedicated to building tools and services to enable creation, promotion, expression, and monetization at scale.

We're looking for a Senior Data Scientist to join the Artist-First AI Music lab. Our team explores and advances generative technologies for music to create new experiences for fans and artists, with a focus on listening experiences that center and celebrate artists and creatives. All of our products will put artists and songwriters first, through these four principles:

Partnerships with record labels, distributors, and music publishers: We'll develop new products for artists and fans through upfront agreements, not by asking for forgiveness later.

Choice in participation: We recognize there's a wide range of views on use of generative music tools within the artistic community. Therefore, artists and rightsholders will choose if and how to participate to ensure the use of AI tools aligns with the values of the people behind the music.

Fair compensation and new revenue: We will build products that create wholly new revenue streams for rightsholders, artists, and songwriters, ensuring they are properly compensated for uses of their work and transparently credited for their contributions.

Artist-fan connection: AI tools we develop will not replace human artistry. They will give artists new ways to be creative and connect with fans. We will use our role as the place where more than 700 million people already come to listen to music every month to ensure that generative AI deepens artist-fan connections.

For more information, see this press release: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2025-10-16/artist-first-ai-music-spotify-collaboration/

What You'll Do

• Lead foundational measurement and insights work for generative music experiences, developing the frameworks that help Spotify understand how creators, listeners, and rights holders engage with generative AI music.
• Design and run large-scale analyses and evaluations of generative music systems, from prompt interpretation to model output quality, using Spotify's unique behavioral datasets, annotations, and experimentation platforms.
• Partner with Engineers and AI Researchers to integrate evaluation signals into model development loops, debugging workflows, and product iteration, making sure scientific rigor informs technical direction.
• Identify the behavioral and market dynamics that shape sustainable consumer demand and creator participation, and translate them into clear strategic recommendations.
• Build practical, scalable metrics and decision systems that define what "good" looks like for AI music: credibility, user delight, safety, creator alignment, and ecosystem trust.
• Bring together model, user behavior, and ecosystem signals into clear narratives that shape product strategy, cross-functional alignment, and long-term priorities across Spotify.
• Create the datasets, dashboards, and long-term measurement systems that give Spotify a lasting, comprehensive understanding of product health and impact.
• Work closely with Product, Design, Research, Legal, Trust & Safety, Marketing, Policy, and Licensing teams, bringing statistical rigor and principled measurement to help build artist-first systems that scale responsibly.

Who You Are

• You have a track record of using insights to shape strategy for major company initiatives involving many different partners.
• You have significant hands-on experience in advanced analytics or data science, ideally in a domain involving LLM evaluation, user-generated content, or complex user behavior.
• You communicate clearly, form well-founded, evidence-backed points of view, and can bring together messy, multimodal signals (quantitative, qualitative, and model telemetry) into clear narratives for senior executives, researchers, engineers, and the music industry.
• You're proficient in advanced analytics with Python and SQL, have analyzed large datasets, and use AI tools (e.g. Cursor, Copilot) to increase your productivity and impact.
• You have experience developing metrics frameworks for complex products that help teams measure impact and reason clearly about priorities.
• You have experience with machine learning frameworks, designing and assessing multimodal or embedding-based models, and validating them against LLM judges or human ground truth, with an understanding of how to evaluate models beyond offline accuracy.
• You have a solid grounding in experimental design and causal inference, such as A/B tests, quasi-experiments, and power analysis.
• You thrive when tackling loosely defined problems in ambiguous, zero-to-one spaces.

Where You'll Be

• We offer you the flexibility to work where you work best! There will be some in person meetings, but still allows for flexibility to work from home
• This team operates within the US Eastern timezone for collaboration

The United States base range for this position is $144,714–$206,735 USD, plus equity. The benefits available for this position include health insurance, six-month paid parental leave, 401(k) retirement plan, monthly meal allowance, 23 paid days off, paid flexible holidays, and paid sick leave. These ranges may be modified in the future.

Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens.

At Spotify, we are passionate about inclusivity and making sure our entire recruitment process is accessible to everyone. We have ways to request reasonable accommodations during the interview process and help assist in what you need. If you need accommodations at any stage of the application or interview process, please let us know - we’re here to support you in any way we can.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us. Find our AI notice here: https://lifeatspotify.com/ai-notice

Today, we are the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service.