Staff Scientist

Uber Uber · Consumer · Amsterdam, Netherlands · Data Science

Staff Applied Scientist on the Earner team at Uber, focusing on building the best platform for drivers and couriers. The role involves setting science strategy for personalization, marketplace efficiency, reliability, and experimentation guardrails. Responsibilities include designing and analyzing large-scale experiments, building statistical, optimization, and machine learning models, defining metrics and observability, leading multi-team initiatives, advancing causal inference and optimization frameworks, mentoring scientists, and communicating with leadership. Requires an M.S. or Ph.D. in a quantitative field with 8+ years of industry experience, deep expertise in statistical inference, experimental design, causal inference, machine learning, optimization, and proficiency in Python and SQL with production-minded code quality.

What you'd actually do

  1. Set the science strategy for personalization, marketplace efficiency, reliability, and experimentation guardrails across the earner experience.
  2. Design, run, and analyze large‑scale experiments and drive standardization of best practices across teams.
  3. Build statistical, optimization, and machine learning models (e.g., pricing/matching, supply positioning, ETA/forecasting, incentives, fraud/anomaly detection) with Engineering partners; establish online/offline evaluation and monitoring.
  4. Define metrics and observability for product and marketplace health; create dashboards, alerts, and automated analyses that detect regressions and quantify causal impact.
  5. Lead multi‑team initiatives from problem framing → modeling/experimentation → decision → production → post‑launch monitoring; provide technical leadership across multiple roadmaps.

Skills

Required

  • Python
  • SQL
  • statistical inference
  • experimental design
  • causal inference
  • econometrics
  • machine learning
  • optimization
  • analytics
  • large-scale datasets
  • distributed tools (Spark, Hive/Presto; HDFS/data lake/warehouse ecosystems)
  • large-scale experiments
  • influencing senior leadership
  • communication of complex technical concepts

Nice to have

  • A/B experimentation design
  • ML system design
  • deep learning for ranking/recommendations
  • large-scale optimization
  • Marketplace experience (pricing, matching, incentives, supply–demand balancing, ETA forecasting)
  • risk/fraud analytics
  • experimentation platforms
  • Scala/Spark
  • Java
  • Go
  • R
  • feature stores
  • online/offline experimentation tooling
  • mentoring
  • technical leadership
  • setting standards
  • reviewing designs/analyses
  • shaping team strategy

What the JD emphasized

  • M.S. or Ph.D. required
  • 8+ years industry experience
  • leading multi‑quarter, cross‑functional initiatives that shipped to production
  • Deep expertise in statistical inference, experimental design, causal inference/econometrics, machine learning, optimization, and analytics
  • Proven track record designing, running, and interpreting large‑scale experiments
  • synthesizing results into actionable conclusions across multiple KPIs and guardrails
  • Demonstrated ability to influence senior leadership
  • communicate complex technical concepts to technical and non‑technical stakeholders

Other signals

  • personalization
  • marketplace efficiency
  • reliability
  • experimentation guardrails
  • large-scale experiments
  • statistical inference
  • causal inference
  • machine learning models
  • optimization
  • fraud/anomaly detection
  • metrics and observability
  • product and marketplace health
  • multi-team initiatives
  • technical leadership
  • causal inference and optimization frameworks
  • counterfactual simulation
  • sensitivity analysis
  • mentoring
  • scientific rigor
  • leadership audiences
  • data-driven recommendations