Senior Data Scientist, Algorithms, Central Market Management

At Lyft, our mission is to improve people’s lives with the world’s best transportation. To do this, we start with our own community by creating an open, inclusive, and diverse organization.

The core of Lyft’s business is running a balanced marketplace; ensuring there are enough drivers available to fulfill rider demand. As a member of the Central Market Management team, you will work in a dynamic environment, where we embrace moving quickly to build the world’s best transportation. Data Scientists in Central Market Management take on a variety of problems including forecasting supply & demand in the marketplace, optimizing investments over different time-scales, measuring the return-on-investment of various growth levers, and shaping strategic business decisions. Forecasting, machine learning (ML), inference, and optimization technologies are critical to solving these interesting and impactful problems at Lyft. Our problems generally do not lend themselves to off-the-shelf solutions, allowing for a significant amount of creativity and first-principles mathematical reasoning.

As a Data Scientist, you’ll be hands-on with building ML models, productionalizing pipelines, and integrating their outputs within decision-making frameworks. The candidate should have strong technical abilities in ML-based forecasting / Mathematical Optimization / Causal Inference, and have a keen interest in rigorously applying these methods to financial and resource allocation problems. You’ll help develop the vision and roadmaps, lead execution of projects, work closely with partner teams to build and scale our products and systems, and deliver business goals. The ideal candidate should balance complexity and efficiency, move fast with an entrepreneurial mindset, and be hands-on to make things happen.

Responsibilities:

• Partner with Data Scientists, Engineers, Product Managers, and Business Partners to frame problems mathematically and within the business context
• Build fit-for-purpose models to address business needs
• Write production model code; collaborate with Software Engineers to implement algorithms in production
• Advise teams on best practices. Be a thought leader and go-to expert for users
• Provide coaching and technical guidance for the team
• Facilitate and foster data-driven and informed decision making and prioritization
• Present findings, recommendations, and results to senior leadership and cross-functional stakeholders

Experience:

• M.S. or Ph.D. in Operations Research, Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics, or other quantitative fields or related work experience
• 4+ years of hands-on experience in ML/Optimization/Causal Inference, and a strong interest in rigorously applying these methods to financial and resource allocation settings
• Passion for solving unstructured and non-standard mathematical problems
• End-to-end experience with data, including querying, aggregation, analysis, and visualization
• Proficiency with Python
• Strong ability to collaborate and communicate with others in a team setting

Benefits

• Great medical, dental, and vision insurance options
• Mental health benefits
• Family building benefits
• In addition to 12 observed holidays, salaried team members have unlimited paid time off, hourly team members have 15 days paid time off
• 401(k) plan to help save for your future
• 18 weeks of paid parental leave. Biological, adoptive, and foster parents are all eligible
• Pre-tax commuter benefits
• Lyft Pink - Lyft team members get an exclusive opportunity to test new benefits of our Ridership Program

Lyft is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer committed to an inclusive and diverse workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regards to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other basis prohibited by law. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

This role will be in-office on a hybrid schedule — Team Members will be expected to work in the office 3 days per week on Mondays, Thursdays and a team-specific third day. Additionally, hybrid roles have the flexibility to work from anywhere for up to 4 weeks per year. #Hybrid

The expected base pay range for this position in the San Francisco area is $144,000 - $180,000. Salary ranges are dependent on a variety of factors, including qualifications, experience and geographic location. Range is not inclusive of potential equity offering, bonus or benefits. Your recruiter can share more information about the salary range specific to your working location and other factors during the hiring process.