Senior Data Scientist - Ranking and Ads Insights

Role Description

This role does not come with relocation assistance

About Us: At Booking.com, data drives our decisions. Technology is at our core. And innovation is everywhere. Through our products, partners and people, we make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

Role and Team Overview

As a Senior Data Scientist in Ranking and Ads, you will work autonomously on impactful strategic business problems, translating them into data stories and delivering insights that inform business decisions across multiple products. The Senior Data Scientist for this team will specialise specifically in Ads. You will design and interpret experiments to guide long-term strategic decisions, build proofs of concept and prototypes, and actively manage stakeholders from operational to Director level. You'll collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, and Data Engineering teams, writing high-quality, reproducible code to ensure your work lands impactfully and enables solid decision-making across leadership.

Ranking and Ads Insights is a new and expanding, highly commercial team providing Data Science and Analytics support within Marketplace. Our mission is to power Ads across Booking.com and support Ranking ML teams to show the right properties to the right people.

Our work enables partners to reach travelers at the perfect moment while preserving customer experience and driving commercial impact. This is a unique opportunity to apply your business awareness to high-stakes initiatives, ensuring your work not only solves complex data problems but actively shapes the strategy for the Ads part of our scope in particular.

You’ll work in a cross-functional team alongside Machine Learning, Data Engineering, and Data Management to support our product vision. Strong commercial acumen and stakeholder management will ensure that your work is impactful and drives business results.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties

• Responsible for defining the strategy and vision for generating impact in one or more Data Science solutions by driving it from ideation to prototyping to full productionisation.
• Responsible for proactively identifying and autonomously prioritizing impactful strategic business problems, translating them into data stories and solving them effectively by applying suitable statistical data analysis and modeling methods. Leverages input from product stakeholders in all of the above to determine the right technical solutions to deliver customer value. May seek guidance from the manager on complex business problems.
• Responsible for driving key projects within the scope of their team to deliver work that informs business decisions across multiple products / business topics in parallel and/or core products / business topics of the area they work in, while self-prioritizing at high velocity. Regularly collaborating across multiple teams.
• Responsible for designing and interpreting quantitative experiments to objectively drive long-term strategic business decision making.
• Responsible for autonomously identifying and managing a broad range of stakeholders, from operational to senior managerial roles and, as required, Director level stakeholders. Maintains effective communication, addresses stakeholder needs, and conveys complex analysis results clearly. Continues to guide less experienced colleagues in all of the above, but may seek guidance from the manager in complex situations with senior stakeholders.
• Responsible for exploring and modifying existing internal and external Data Science approaches. Makes these solutions reusable by designing for easy adoption and proactively educating and upskilling peers on how to effectively utilize these solutions in their work.
• Responsible for incorporating scalability, reproducibility and long term orientation in the work they do. Regularly sharing best practices with peers in their area.
• Responsible for acting as a force multiplier for peers in their area by actively helping them with their craft through means of coaching, mentoring and setting a good example.
• Responsible for contributing significantly to the community of their area by thinking of and implementing ways to make other data professionals more effective (ie. group trainings, community projects), actively participating in community strengthening activities (ie. recruitment) and connecting their area to the rest of the business.
• Must have a deep understanding of the larger data ecosystem at Booking and how it relates to the work they do.
• Responsible for proactively collaborating with peers in related crafts (ie. Data Engineering) on all projects owned by their team, anticipating data needs to maintain smooth execution of projects.
• Responsible for having significant deep knowledge about the operational, tactical and strategic goals of their area (ie. track / vertical) and be knowledgeable of the goals of their wider area (ie. Business Unit).
• Responsible for ensuring quality of their own work by validating it through peer review.
• Responsible for influencing business decisions within their wider area (ie. track / vertical).
• Must be a subject-matter expert in one area of Data Science (ie. methodology, technology) and its application as an end-to-end product that generates business impact, acting as a go-to Data Science authority for senior business stakeholders of their area.

Role Qualifications and Requirements

• Knowledgeable about statistical properties of good metrics, and ability to scalably test them
• Expertise in experimentation and knowledge of causal inference beyond A/B testing
• Expertise in SQL, Python and familiarity with other languages like R
• Experience building libraries/modules in Python
• Familiarity with APIs is good; building/maintaining them is great
• Strong understanding of fundamental machine learning concepts
• Strong knowledge of reporting/visualization techniques (e.g., Tableau, Graphite, Power BI, etc.)

Benefits & Perks: Global Impact, Personal Relevance

• Annual paid time off and generous paid leave scheme including parental (22-weeks paid leave), grandparent, bereavement, and care leave
• Hybrid working including flexible working arrangements, working from home furniture and ergonomic support, and up to 20 days per year working from abroad (home country)
• A beautiful sustainable HQ Campus in Amsterdam, that offers on-site meals, coffee, and snacks, multi-faith and breastfeeding rooms at the office
• Commuting allowance and bike reimbursement scheme
• Discounts & wallet credits to spend on our products, upgrade to Booking.com Genius Level 3, and friends & family Booking.com discount vouchers
• Free access to online learning platforms, development and mentorship programs
• Global Employee Assistance Program, free Headspace membership