Develop metrics frameworks and offline evaluation approaches for ranking and recommendation systems, including proxy metrics that reliably predict long-term outcomes like retention, community health, and user satisfaction
Design and analyze experiments for relevance features, accounting for challenges unique to networked platforms such as spillover effects between communities, interference between contributors and consumers, and long-run impacts of ranking changes on content supply
Identify opportunities where improved measurement and analysis can unlock product insights that were previously unmeasurable or ambiguous, particularly around content quality, search intent understanding, and personalization effectiveness
Mentor and elevate other data scientists across the organization on relevance evaluation, experimentation best practices for ranking systems, causal reasoning, and statistical rigor
Publish and share methodological advances internally and, where appropriate, externally to contribute to the broader relevance, recommendation systems, and experimentation community Required
Requirements
With 100,000+ active communities and approximately 126 million daily active unique visitors, Reddit is one of the internet’s largest sources of information.
Consumer data science plays a key role in fulfilling Reddit’s mission of bringing community & belonging to the world through deep understanding of how we can better connect people to the best information and communities for them - the heart of Reddit’s product - from crypto to support groups, gaming to AMAs, travel tips to memes.
Reddit's relevance challenges are uniquely complex.
As a Senior Staff Data Scientist on the Consumer team, you will be the go-to expert on relevance measurement and evaluation, partnering closely with Feeds and Search ML teams to tackle the most complex ranking, recommendation, and retrieval challenges across Consumer.
Partner deeply with ML engineers and product teams to translate model performance metrics into user-facing impact
Ph.D. in Statistics, Computer Science, Information Retrieval, Economics, or a related quantitative field with a strong focus on recommendation systems, ranking, causal inference, or evaluation methodology; or M.S. with equivalent depth of expertise
experience in applied science, data science, or relevance/ranking-focused roles
Deep expertise in metrics design and evaluation for ranking and recommendation systems, including offline metrics and counterfactual evaluation
Strong understanding of causal inference and experimentation methodology, including practical
experience with challenges relevant to ranking systems such as novelty effects, position bias, long-run effect estimation, and ecosystem-level impacts •
Expert knowledge of SQL and proficiency in R and/or Python for statistical computing
Demonstrated ability to influence product and organizational strategy through data-driven insights about content quality and user experience
Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain nuanced statistical and ML concepts and tradeoffs to both technical and non-technical senior stakeholders •
Experience mentoring data scientists and building organizational capability in relevance evaluation and experimentation
Experience with social network or user-generated content platforms where community-level dynamics create non-trivial relevance and experimentation challenges Benefits:
Additionally, Reddit offers a wide range of
In select roles and locations, the interviews will be recorded, transcribed and summarized by artificial intelligence (AI).
In addition to base salary, this job is eligible to receive equity in the form of restricted stock units, and depending on the position offered, it may also be eligible to receive a commission.
benefits to U.S.-based employees, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k) program with employer match, generous time off for vacation, and parental leave.
To provide greater transparency to candidates, we share base salary ranges for all US-based job postings regardless of state.
We set standard base pay ranges for all roles based on function, level, and country location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies.
The base salary range for this position is: $232,500 — $325,500 USD
Contact
For more information, visit www.redditinc.com .
To learn more, please visit https://www.redditinc.com/careers/ .
Additional details
It’s built on shared interests, passion, and trust, and is home to the most open and authentic conversations on the internet.
Reddit is poised to rapidly innovate and grow like no other time in its history.
This is a unique opportunity to leave your mark on one of the most influential and trafficked corners of the internet.
Our platform is a deeply interconnected network of communities, contributors, and consumers - where the notion of "relevance" spans personalized content ranking, community discovery, and search across an enormous corpus of authentic, user-generated content.
We need a senior technical leader who thrives on these hard problems and can raise the bar for how we measure, evaluate, and improve the quality of recommendations and search results across the entire Consumer organization.
You will shape how Reddit understands content quality, define the metrics and analytical frameworks that guide relevance improvements, and influence product strategy through rigorous analysis and experimentation. Responsibilities
Serve as the technical authority on relevance metrics and evaluation methodology across Consumer, setting standards for how we measure the quality of feeds, search results, and recommendations in a complex, community-driven environment
Experience defining and validating quality metrics for content ranking, search, or recommendations at scale
Strong theoretical grounding in experimental design, including power analysis, variance reduction techniques, and sequential testing as applied to relevance experiments
Comfortable in innovative and fast-paced environments with a bias toward action Preferred