Staff Data Scientist - Growth

1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but most providers don't accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway’s mission is to fix this by building a new mental healthcare system everyone can access. We started by solving the biggest barrier to care: insurance. The admin work - credentialing, claims, payment reconciliation - is a nightmare. We've automated that.

But we're going further. Over 75,000 providers across all 50 states run their practice on our software, serving over 1 million patients. We are building the best tools for therapists to run their entire practice, reimagining the experience of finding a therapist, and investing in the platform foundations to enable this at scale. We aren't just a billing layer; we are becoming the platform where care actually happens.

We're a Series D company with $325M+ in funding (a16z, Accel, Spark Capital, etc.), looking for exceptional people to help us achieve this mission. We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career. Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better.

Join us to build the measurement and decision engine for patient growth.

As a Staff Data Scientist, Growth, you will be the senior analytical and strategic leader who makes marketing performance legible, credible, and actionable. You will partner closely with Growth Marketing leadership and channel owners across paid, lifecycle, and organic, plus Finance, Product, and Engineering. Your job is to help Headway answer the questions that matter:

• What is truly incremental?

• Where should we invest next?

• What is driving performance shifts?

• How do we scale what works without fooling ourselves?

You will build the frameworks, analyses, and modeling approaches that enable the marketing team to move faster with confidence. This is high-stakes decision support for a growth engine that needs to compound and certainly not a dashboard-only role or “just attribution” role. 

• Own incrementality measurement across channels. Design and analyze geo tests, holdouts, lift tests, and quasi-experimental approaches when randomized tests are not feasible. Define clear guardrails, decision rules, and what “good” looks like.

• Build a marketing measurement system that leaders trust. Define canonical metrics (CAC, LTV, payback, conversion, retention, capacity-adjusted ROI), ensure definitions are consistent, and create a clear measurement narrative that aligns Marketing, Finance, and Product.

• Turn ambiguity into a plan. When performance changes, you will diagnose why, quantify contributing drivers, and recommend concrete actions. You will be the person who can say, “Here’s what moved, here’s why we believe it moved, and here’s what we do next.”

• Develop and evolve modeling approaches where they create leverage. Build practical models such as LTV and retention forecasting, cohort value prediction, causal uplift models for lifecycle, and marketing mix modeling when appropriate. Focus on models that survive contact with reality: calibration, backtesting, and decision usefulness.

• Partner with Engineering on the measurement plumbing. Improve event instrumentation, identity resolution assumptions, offline conversion integration, and data quality monitoring so measurement is robust. Advocate for minimal, decision-critical requirements that unlock reliable learning.

• Design learning loops that scale. Create repeatable experimentation and analysis templates for channel and creative testing, including measurement of message by audience by surface. Increase testing velocity without lowering the truth standard.

• Influence strategy, not just reporting. Bring an evidence-based point of view on channel allocation, growth constraints, saturation, diminishing returns, and the tradeoffs between short-term acquisition and long-term retention and care outcomes.

• Uplevel the team. Mentor analysts and data scientists working on growth, set quality standards, and help establish best practices across experimentation, causal inference, and forecasting.

• 10+ years using data science, analytics, and experimentation to drive decisions in marketing, growth, or marketplace environments (or equivalent scope and demonstrated impact).

• Deep expertise in causal inference and incrementality in real-world marketing systems: you know the failure modes (selection bias, channel cannibalization, platform noise, attribution myths) and how to design around them.

• Strong SQL plus strong proficiency in Python or R, with the ability to build reliable, reusable analytical workflows.

• Practical modeling skill, especially as applied to marketing and growth: cohorting, forecasting, LTV estimation, saturation and diminishing returns, MMM concepts, calibration and monitoring.

• Track record of influencing executive decisions with clear recommendations and measurable outcomes, not just analysis.

• Excellent communication: you can make complex measurement logic understandable and defensible to non-technical partners, and you can call out uncertainty without losing momentum.

• High ownership and strong judgment: you prioritize what changes decisions, you move quickly, and you know when to slow down because the risk is real.

• You are motivated by the mission. Access and affordability in mental healthcare are not abstract problems here.

• Experience with geo experiments, marketplace constraints, or capacity-aware marketing optimization.

• Experience measuring acquisition quality beyond conversion: downstream engagement, retention, clinical matching quality, and unit economics.

• Familiarity with lifecycle marketing measurement (incrementality, uplift, experimentation design for messaging).

• Experience partnering with Finance on budget allocation, payback, and scenario planning.

• Comfort working with imperfect identity, privacy constraints, and evolving attribution ecosystems.

Compensation and Benefits:

The expected base pay range for this position is $212,000 - $265,000, based on a variety of factors including qualifications, experience, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for an equity grant, depending on the position and level.

We are committed to offering a comprehensive and competitive total rewards package, including robust health and wellness benefits, retirement savings, and meaningful ownership opportunities through equity. Compensation decisions are made holistically, ensuring fairness and alignment with market benchmarks while recognizing individual contributions and potential.

• Benefits offered include:

  • Equity compensation

  • Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage

  • HSA / FSA

  • 401K

  • Work-from-Home Stipend

  • Therapy Reimbursement

  • 16-week parental leave for eligible employees

  • Carrot Fertility annual reimbursement and membership

  • 13 paid holidays each year as well as a Holiday Break during the week between December 25th and December 31st

  • Flexible PTO

  • Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

  • Training and professional development

We believe a team's strength is in its people, and we cannot achieve this mission without a team that reflects the diversity of this problem – across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, national origin, religion, family status, disability, military status, and experience. Headway is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Headway will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please inform the recruiter when they contact you to schedule your interview.

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A notice to Headway applicants: To protect yourself against phishing and recruitment fraud, please note that Headway only accepts applications through our official careers page at https://headway.co/careers. Headway will never refer you to external websites, ask for payment or personal information, or conduct interviews via messaging apps. All official communication will come from a @findheadway.com email address. If you are contacted by someone claiming to be from Headway via an unofficial channel, please do not share any information and report it as spam.