Sr. Data Scientist, Performance Marketing

Pinterest; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 139,764 - 287,749; Full time

Job summary

Pinterest is seeking a Senior Data Scientist for their marketing team in California. This role focuses on enhancing marketing effectiveness through advanced statistical and machine learning methods, influencing user growth and engagement across the platform.

Ideal candidates need 5+ years of experience, a master’s degree in a quantitative field, and proficiency in statistical tools and communication. The role requires in-office collaboration 1–2 times per quarter, ensuring flexibility while impacting Pinterest's growth strategy.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience applying scientific methods.
• Strong background in statistics and quantitative analysis.
• Experience leading key technical projects.

Responsibilities

• Conduct deep strategic analysis to influence marketing efforts.
• Build statistical and machine learning models to optimize strategies.
• Translate analytical findings into actionable insights.

Skills

Statistical analysis

SQL/Hive proficiency

Python or R

Marketing measurement solutions

Excellent communication skills

Strong business acumen

Education

Master's degree in a quantitative field

Tools

Statistical software

ETL tools

Job description

About Pinterest

Millions of people around the world come to our platform to find creative ideas, dream about new possibilities and plan for memories that will last a lifetime. At Pinterest, we’re on a mission to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love, and that starts with the people behind the product.

Discover a career where you ignite innovation for millions, transform passion into growth opportunities, celebrate each other’s unique experiences and embrace the flexibility to do your best work. Creating a career you love? It’s Possible.

At Pinterest, AI isn’t just a feature, it’s a powerful partner that augments our creativity and amplifies our impact, and we’re looking for candidates who are excited to be a part of that. To get a complete picture of your experience and abilities, we’ll explore your foundational skills and how you collaborate with AI.

Through our interview process, what matters most is that you can always explain your approach, showing us not just what you know, but how you think. You can read more about our AI interview philosophy and how we use AI in our recruiting process here.

Position Summary

We are looking for a Senior Data Scientist to join our marketing org. As a Senior Data Scientist you introduce greater scientific rigor into the marketing measurement and optimization processes to shape Pinterest’s user growth and marketing strategy. The results of your work will influence and drive strategic decisions for the company—identify investment opportunities for growth, understand user growth and behavior, and define metrics to grow and sustain our user base. You will collaborate on a wide array of business problems with a diverse set of cross‑functional partners across Marketing, Product, Engineering, Design, Research, Product Analytics, Data Engineering and others.

The role is within the Growth Marketing team and would be supporting performance marketing efforts focused on driving user growth for Pinterest.

What you’ll do

• Deep strategic analysis to answer growth marketing ecosystem questions such as how to drive monthly active users from paid performance marketing, how to quantify the effect of paid performance marketing in new markets, and how to drive user engagement and user LTV from performance marketing.
• Evolve our existing systems like geo‑testing frameworks and other incrementality testing frameworks.
• Build and deploy statistical and machine learning models such as propensity, forecasting, and lifetime value (LTV) models to optimize marketing strategies and enhance audience targeting.
• Develop new statistical models as well as maintain and improve existing models like user lifetime value models, budgeting models, long‑term user retention models, etc.
• Collaborate on a wide array of product and business problems with a diverse set of cross‑functional partners across Product, Engineering, Analytics, Marketing, Data Engineering and others.
• Evolve our experimentation capabilities and tools to evaluate the business impact of performance marketing investment. Advise on experimentation best practices, identify flaws in experiment practices and results, build tools for experiment analysis, etc.
• Identify the right measures of success for teams and help them track those metrics. Own the full lifecycle of those metrics from logging requirements, metrics definition, prototype pipelines, and improvements.
• Translate complex analytical findings into clear, actionable insights and strategic recommendations for both technical and non‑technical stakeholders, including senior leadership.
• Write clear, actionable analyses that help teams uncover opportunities and identify areas of improvement to our existing strategies.
• Design, maintain, and promote dashboards and automated reporting tools to empower stakeholders with self‑serve, data‑driven decision‑making capabilities. Build and optimize ETL data pipelines to automate reporting, support deep dive analysis and feature engineering for analytical models.

What we’re looking for

• 5+ years of combined post‑graduate academic and industry experience applying scientific methods to solve real‑world problems.
• Master’s degree in a quantitative field such as mathematics, statistics, computer science or engineering.
• Hands‑on experience with building marketing measurement solutions to quantify the business impact of marketing tactics and investments.
• Strong background in statistics and quantitative analysis, with experience applying advanced statistical techniques to real‑world problems.
• Expertise in at least one scripting language (ideally Python or R).
• Proficiency in SQL/Hive. Ability to write efficient SQL queries.
• Strong business and product sense. Strong skills in shaping vague questions into well‑defined analyses and success metrics that drive business decisions.
• Excellent communication skills, able to lead initiatives and communicate findings to leadership and cross‑functional teams. Explains work and thought processes clearly and concisely.
• Experience leading key technical projects.
• Strong experimentation background.
• Statistical rigor. Experience with causal inference projects.

Relocation Statement

This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.

In‑Office Requirement Statement

• We recognize that the ideal environment for work is situational and may differ across departments. What this looks like day‑to‑day can vary based on the needs of each organization or role.
• This role will need to be in the office for in‑person collaboration 1–2 times per quarter and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country.

Base salary range: $139,764 — $287,749 USD

Our Commitment to Inclusion

Pinterest is an equal‑opportunity employer and makes employment decisions on the basis of merit. We want to have the best qualified people in every job. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, status as a protected veteran, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information or characteristics (or those of a family member) or any other consideration made unlawful by applicable federal, state or local laws. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you require a medical or religious accommodation during the job application process, please complete this form for support.