Lead Data Scientist II, Growth

CURRENT ROOT EMPLOYEES - Please apply using the career page in Workday. This career site is for external applicants only.

The Opportunity

We believe that a disruptive insurance company must have a principled quantitative framework at its foundation. At Root, we are committed to the rigorous development and effective deployment of modern statistical machine learning methods to problems in the insurance industry.

At Root, the Quantitative Science team is responsible for the majority of all marketing capital allocation, using quantitative methods to test, maintain, and enhance our marketing strategies across numerous distribution channels. As a Lead Data Scientist II on the Growth Data Science team, you will spearhead R&D initiatives ranging from optimizing media mix to launching experimental campaigns in new channels, particularly those in the mid and upper funnel.

With deep experience in full funnel marketing, you will provide domain-wide thought leadership on experimentation, targeting, measurement, and best practices. You will proactively identify new opportunities for expansion and optimization, shepherding solutions from R&D into production. You will influence your leader to help shape and prioritize the team’s experimentation roadmap.

Root is a “work where it works best” company. This means we will support you working in whatever location that works best for you across the US.

 Salary Range: $151,200 - $189,000  (Bonus and LTI eligible)

How You Will Make an Impact

• Spearhead the research and development of media mix models to drive demonstrably profitable growth

• Perform rapid testing and rigorous measurement of novel marketing strategies

• Provide domain-wide thought leadership on mid-upper funnel experimentation, targeting, measurement, and best practices based on industry experience

• Proactively identify and frame greenfield opportunities for expansion and optimization of direct marketing at Root

• Build data science pipelines to quickly iterate on research ideas and put them into production

• Influence tactical and strategic planning for the team, including sprint planning, 6-week reviews, and quarterly OKR setting

• Take end-to-end ownership of problem domains and continuously improve upon quantitative solutions

What You Will Need to Succeed

• Advanced degree in a quantitative discipline (PhD preferred) and 6+ years of applying advanced quantitative techniques to problems in industry

• Full funnel marketing experience:

  • Developing, executing, and measuring the impact of targeted, data-driven marketing strategies

  • Targeting Models: building and deploying ML targeting models for video, display, and/or email campaigns

  • Measurement: designing and implementing A/B tests to measure the incremental lift of a new campaign

  • Media Mix Models: building and operationalizing media mix models, with rigorous post-deployment analysis of their efficacy

• Technical skills:

  • Advanced programming skills with experience using modern packages in Python or R; expertise in databases and SQL; familiarity with version control (e.g. Git)

  • Experience with AWS (or analogous) utilities, e.g., EC2, SageMaker, S3, Athena

  • Excellent business intelligence and visualization skills, with the ability to speak to many different audiences

• Ownership mentality: takes the initiative to identify, champion, and execute on the highest impact work

• Ability to consider problems from first principles, with the instinct to use expertise and prior experience to guide but not dictate the solution

• Preferred but not required:

  • Experience working with DSPs such as The Trade Desk and Meta

  • Experience using identity graphs to enhance targeting and measurement of marketing campaigns

  • MLOps: experience with automation and building scalable and efficient ML solutions, familiarity with software engineering best practices

  • Insurance industry experience

Don’t meet every single requirement?

Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At Root, Inc., we are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway!

Join us

At Root, we judge people based on the merit of their work, not who they are. If you are passionate about what this role entails and solving real problems, we encourage you to apply. We want to learn about you and what you can add to our team.

Who we are

We’re harnessing the power of technology to revolutionize insurance. Using machine learning and mobile telematic platforms, we’ve built one of the most innovative FinTech companies in the world. And we’re just getting started.

What draws people to Root

Our success is in large part due to our unwavering standards in hiring. We recognize that our products are only as good as the people building and promoting them. We want individuals who find solutions by going through the cycle of ideation to implementation with curiosity, rigor, and an analytical lens. Ask anyone who works here and you’ll hear similar reasons for why they joined:

Autonomy—for assertive self-starters, the opportunities to contribute are limitless.

Impact—by challenging the way it’s always been done, we solve problems that have a big impact on our business.

Collaboration—we encourage rich discussion and civil debate at every turn.

People—we are inspired by the collection of crazy-smart people around us.