The Role
The Principal Marketing Data Scientist will drive top-of-funnel growth through measurement, modeling, and analytics, focusing on budget allocation and performance recommendations.
Summary Generated by Built In
About Quizlet:
At Quizlet, our mission is to help every learner achieve their outcomes in the most effective and delightful way. Our $1B+ learning platform serves tens of millions of students every month, including two-thirds of U.S. high schoolers and half of U.S. college students, powering over 2 billion learning interactions monthly.
We blend cognitive science with machine learning to personalize and enhance the learning experience for students, professionals, and lifelong learners alike. We’re energized by the potential to power more learners through multiple approaches and various tools.
Let’s Build the Future of Learning
Join us to design and deliver AI-powered learning tools that scale across the world and unlock human potential.
About the Team:
Our Data Science team at Quizlet partners with the Product, Marketing, and Finance teams to define the metrics that matter and to turn noisy signals into clear, causal decisions. This role sits at the intersection of AI & Data and Marketing, building the measurement and insights that unlock dramatic top-of-funnel growth.
About the Role:
We’re hiring a Principal Marketing Data Scientist to be the technical and strategic engine behind TOF growth—designing trusted measurement, separating correlation from causation, and turning models into concrete decisions on budget, channels, audiences, and creative. You won’t manage people; you’ll lead through expertise, partnering closely with marketing data science, data engineering, martech, and channel owners to deliver repeatable, compounding impact.
We’re happy to share that this is an onsite position in our San Francisco office. To help foster team collaboration, we require that employees be in the office a minimum of three days per week: Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday and as needed by your manager or the company. We believe that this working environment facilitates increased work efficiency, team partnership, and supports growth as an employee and organization.
In this role, you will:
- Own TOF measurement & incrementality
- Design an always-on cross-channel measurement architecture (paid, organic/SEO, owned, influencer/affiliate, brand, CTV/offline)
- Stand up geo/user holdouts, heavy-ups, synthetic controls, CUPED/diff-in-diff, and brand-lift/survey programs; produce trustworthy incremental reach/qualified visit estimates
- Triangulate MMM + incrementality + platform MTA with decision rules (MMM for budget setting, holdouts for validation, platform data for operations).
- Forecast, allocate, and de-risk spend: build response curves from media → reach → qualified visits → sign-ups → LTV with uncertainty bounds
- Deliver marginal dollar recommendations by channel/geo/audience
- Model payback windows (30-day to 3-year LTV) across offer/price/creative scenarios; define guardrails for frequency, saturation, and diminishing returns
- Ship reporting that drives decisions (not just dashboards)
- Build exec-ready views that connect leading indicators (brand search, share of voice, qualified-visit rate, creative score) to lagging outcomes (sign-ups, retention, LTV)
- Run always-on traffic-source health with red-flag monitoring and forward projections; quantify the cost to hit growth targets under uncertainty
- Unlock audience & creative leverage by creating a creative learning agenda and taxonomy; analyze fatigue, hooks, and motifs; document lift and roll into playbooks
- Drive cohort and growth-segment insights by acquisition date/platform/geo/demo/channel to inform media, landing experiences, and lifecycle sequencing
- Raise the bar on tooling, data quality, and privacy
- Specify and evaluate the measurement stack (analytics/MMP, incrementality/MMM, survey/brand tracking, CDP/tagging); prioritize buy-vs-build
- Define event/identity standards and data quality SLAs across web/app; navigate ATT and Privacy Sandbox constraints with first-party data
- Lead through influence: coach peers, set analysis and code standards, and create documentation that makes insights reusable
- Translate ambiguity (“grow awareness”) into hypotheses, experiments, and clear trade-off recommendations for senior leaders.
What you bring to the table:
- 15+ years in marketing analytics/data science (consumer tech), including principal-level individual contributor impact; depth in TOF growth
- Hands-on leadership of incrementality testing (geo/user holdouts, heavy-ups, synthetic controls) and MMM programs; fluency in limits of MTA and calibration across methods
- Proven budget allocation work: response curves, scenario planning, and payback/LTV modeling that drove quarterly investment decisions
- Advanced SQL and Python or R (pandas/NumPy; Bayesian modeling with PyMC/Stan a plus)
- Production analytics in BigQuery/Snowflake/Redshift with dbt modeling and orchestration (Airflow/Dagster)
- Executive-grade storytelling via Looker/Tableau/Mode; KPI design that ladders to business outcomes
- Practical literacy with GA4, tag managers, MMPs, ad platforms (search/social/video/display/CTV), CDP, and survey/brand-lift tools
- Demonstrated ability to separate seasonality from media effects and to turn noisy platform signals into causally sound recommendations
Bonus points if you have:
- Linking brand tracking and surveys to search volume and site traffic; measuring brand-to-performance spillovers
- SEO/ASO opportunity sizing; content decay/refresh modeling; creative-analytics pipelines (LLM/vision-assisted tagging)
- International growth (market selection, localization measurement)
- Experience in education or other high-intent, seasonal categories
Compensation, Benefits & Perks:
- Quizlet is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Salary transparency helps to mitigate unfair hiring practices when it comes to discrimination and pay gaps. Total compensation for this role is market competitive, including a starting base salary of $249,000 - $342,000, depending on location and experience, as well as company stock options
- Collaborate with your manager and team to create a healthy work-life balance
- 20 vacation days that we expect you to take!
- Competitive health, dental, and vision insurance (100% employee and 75% dependent PPO, Dental, VSP Choice)
- Employer-sponsored 401k plan with company match
- Access to LinkedIn Learning and other resources to support professional growth
- Paid Family Leave, FSA, HSA, Commuter benefits, and Wellness benefits
- 40 hours of annual paid time off to participate in volunteer programs of choice
Why Join Quizlet?
🌎 Massive reach: 60M+ users, 1B+ interactions per week
🧠 Cutting-edge tech: Generative AI, adaptive learning, cognitive science
📈 Strong momentum: Top-tier investors, sustainable business, real traction
🎯 Mission-first: Work that makes a difference in people’s lives
🤝 Inclusive culture: Committed to equity, diversity, and belonging
We strive to make everyone feel comfortable and welcome!
We work to create a holistic interview process, where both Quizlet and candidates have an opportunity to view what it would be like to work together, in exploring a mutually beneficial partnership.
We provide a transparent setting that gives a comprehensive view of who we are!
In Closing:
At Quizlet, we’re excited about passionate people joining our team—even if you don’t check every box on the requirements list. We value unique perspectives and believe everyone has something meaningful to contribute. Our culture is all about taking initiative, learning through challenges, and striving for high-quality work while staying curious and open to new ideas. We believe in honest, respectful communication, thoughtful collaboration, and creating a supportive space where everyone can grow and succeed together.”
Quizlet’s success as an online learning community depends on a strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
As an equal opportunity employer and a tech company committed to societal change, we welcome applicants from all backgrounds. Women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply. Come join us!
To All Recruiters and Placement Agencies:
At this time, Quizlet does not accept unsolicited agency resumes and/or profiles.
Please do not forward unsolicited agency resumes to our website or to any Quizlet employee. Quizlet will not pay fees to any third-party agency or firm nor will it be responsible for any agency fees associated with unsolicited resumes. All unsolicited resumes received will be considered the property of Quizlet.
Top Skills
Airflow
BigQuery
Dagster
Dbt
Looker
Python
R
Redshift
Snowflake
SQL
Tableau
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The Company
What We Do
Quizlet is a leading consumer learning brand that builds learning tools to inspire and empower students and teachers. Our team is already supporting a user base of over 60 million active users a month. We're also among the top 20 U.S. websites and top education apps for iOS and Android - and it's only the beginning. We’re a fast-growing Series C startup, valued at $1 Billion and backed by Union Square Ventures, Costanoa Venture Capital, Icon Ventures, Owl Ventures, Altos Ventures and General Atlantic.
With our massive reach and focus on delivering high-quality innovative learning tools, we're having a major global impact on education.
