Sr. Research Data Scientist

Roku, Inc.; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 330,000 - 375,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Equity awards

Paid time off

Wellness benefits

Job summary

Roku, Inc. is looking for a Senior Research Data Scientist to join their Data Science team in Boston. This role focuses on developing a causal inference platform to measure customer actions and product impacts.

Ideal candidates bring a PhD in a quantitative field and a decade of experience in causal inference and machine learning, along with strong communication skills to relay econometric findings to business teams.

The position offers a hybrid work environment with competitive salary and comprehensive benefits.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience applying causal inference methods.
• Experience with terabyte- or petabyte-scale datasets.
• Strong communication skills to translate findings.

Responsibilities

• Design and build a causal inference platform.
• Implement causal estimation methods for real-world applications.
• Work with Data Engineering and Product Management teams.

Skills

Causal inference methods

Machine learning

Economics

SQL

Python

Communication

Education

PhD in Economics or related field

Tools

Spark

Ray

scikit-learn

XGBoost

LightGBM

Job description

Teamwork makes the stream work.

Roku is the #1 TV streaming platform in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and we've set our sights on powering every television in the world. Roku pioneered streaming to the TV. Our mission is to be the TV streaming platform that connects the entire TV ecosystem. We connect consumers to the content they love, enable content publishers to build and monetize large audiences, and provide advertisers unique capabilities to engage consumers.

From your first day at Roku, you'll make a valuable and valued contribution. We're a fast-growing public company where no one is a bystander. We offer you the opportunity to delight millions of TV streamers around the world while gaining meaningful experience across a variety of disciplines.

About the team

Our Data Science team is a high-impact research team actively shaping the future of TV, using Big Data to build and enhance the user experience on the Roku streaming platform. Our production-ready machine learning models and statistical solutions optimize the user experience across all of Roku's core business models and products, and our scientists engage closely with business, product, and engineering leaders to make material and measurable impacts on the success and growth of the platform.

About the role

As a Senior Research Data Scientist on Roku's Data Science team, you will lead the development of a best-in-class causal inference platform that measures and optimizes the true incremental impact of customer actions, product features, and business interventions on long-term outcomes. Partnering with the Customer Growth organization, you will build the methods and systems that enable Roku to make high-confidence decisions from observational data when randomized experiments are not feasible.

You will own the full lifecycle of causal measurement—from gathering business requirements and defining estimation approaches, to partnering with Engineering to productionize scalable causal pipelines and communicating findings to senior leadership. Your work will directly inform growth, retention, and monetization strategy across the platform, making this role ideal for an applied economist or econometrician who excels at the intersection of rigorous research and production engineering. This is someone equally comfortable deriving identification strategies and building estimators on terabyte-scale data.

For California, New York, and Massachusetts only: the estimated annual base salary for this position is between $330,000 and $375,000 annually. Compensation packages are based on factors unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, certifications, and specific geographical location. This role is eligible for health insurance, equity awards, life insurance, disability benefits, parental leave, wellness benefits, and paid time off.

What you'll be doing

• Design, build, and productionize a causal inference platform that standardizes how Roku measures the incremental impact of customer actions and business decisions
• Research and implement causal estimation methods, including heterogeneous treatment effects, tailored to Roku's data and business questions
• Build long-term outcome frameworks that enable impact projection from limited observation windows
• Develop diagnostic and validation standards at scale to ensure credibility of causal estimates
• Leverage AI to create counterfactual scenarios and build tools that help users run, understand, and act on causal estimates correctly
• Work cross-functionally with Data Engineering, Product Management, and Core Analytics to translate business questions into well-defined causal problems and deploy production-ready solutions
• Contribute to the technical vision of the Data Science team and the broader research agenda across causal inference, predictive modeling, and experimentation

We're excited if you have

• PhD in Economics, Econometrics, Statistics, or a closely related quantitative field with a strong emphasis on causal inference
• 10+ years of experience applying causal inference and machine learning methods to real-world problems, with a demonstrated track record of measurable impact
• Deep expertise in observational causal methods such as propensity score matching, Double Machine Learning, doubly robust estimation, instrumental variables, and difference-in-differences
• Experience building reusable causal inference tools or platforms beyond one-off analyses
• Proficiency with Spark, Ray, SQL, Python, and ML frameworks such as scikit-learn, XGBoost, and LightGBM
• Experience with terabyte- or petabyte-scale datasets in distributed computing environments
• Strong communication skills with the ability to translate econometric findings into clear business recommendations
• Technology industry experience; connected TV, streaming, or advertising experience is a plus

Our Hybrid Work Approach

Roku fosters an inclusive and collaborative environment where teams work in the office Monday through Thursday. Fridays are flexible for remote work except for employees whose roles are required to be in the office five days a week or employees who are in offices with a five day in office policy.

Accommodations

Roku welcomes applicants of all backgrounds and provides reasonable accommodations and adjustments in accordance with applicable law. If you require reasonable accommodation at any point in the hiring process, please direct your inquiries to [e-mail].