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Lead Data Scientist - Programmatic Ads

Zynga is a leading developer of the world’s most popular social games that are played by people around the world every single day. To date, more than 1 billion people have played our games across Web and mobile, including Words With Friends, FarmVille, Zynga Poker, Merge Dragons, Empires & Puzzles, Toon Blast, and CSR.

Zynga’s Programmatic Ads Platform team uses our outstanding and expansive data to acquire high-value users for our gaming portfolio. We strive for a better understanding of our players which translates into challenges and features that delight them.

Here’s where you would come in: identify and formalize problems related to campaign and bidding optimization. Design and develop systems and machine learning models to optimize campaigns at scale and low-latency. Be innovative, be creative, use every bit of that key commodity – data. Millions of people play Zynga games every day, so our data is tremendously rich, and we have a lot of it!

This role will be responsible for communicating findings to your peers – both technical and non-technical. Your solutions to difficult problems will need to be demonstrably impactful, visual, and maintainable. You will collaborate with engineering teams to build campaign bidders and optimizers. You will collaborate with User Acquisition Managers, Product Managers, and Engineers to deliver business impact.

Responsibilities:

• Design and implement scalable systems and models to experiment with campaigns and creatives across channels and acquire users at scale
• Work with large amounts of data to find and realize opportunities to acquire and re-target users profitably delivering unambiguous business metric impact
• Craft effective campaign strategies to acquire users across a multitude of user acquisition channels
• Drive and empower user acquisition team to make quantitatively informed, evidence-based decisions - through custom visualizations, and ETLs to augment user data
• Design, test, verify and implement machine learning models with Zynga’s games that impact millions of users. Models may include but not limited to LTV modeling, campaign bid recommendations, budget allocation, clustering/segmentation, forecasting, fraud detection, and/or reinforcement learning
• Build services and applications that improve effectiveness of campaigns, creatives, ad networks, and/or user segments.

Required Skills and Experience:

• B.S. or B.A. in Math, Statistics, Comp Sci, Engineering, or other quantitative field required; Masters, MBA or PhD preferred
• 3-5+ years of relevant work experience in data science or analytics role in a Machine Learning team
• Proficient in Python/Java/C/C++/C#/Go; Demonstrated experience in deploying models or systems in high throughput or low-latency environments
• Strong experience in SQL
• Proven experience with some of the following: machine learning, predictive modeling, deep learning
• Experience in analyzing large datasets, preferably in a Hadoop or Spark environment, and deploying production-ready systems at scale
• Strong written and oral communication skills
• Strong passion for gaming and performance marketing!
• Familiarity with OpenRTB, mobile programmatic ad tech, performance marketing, and/or user acquisition landscape is a big plus
• Ability to build and maintain simple software services and systems at scale; experience in deploying services in at least one cloud provider (AWS, Google Cloud or Azure) is a big plus

What we offer you:

• Competitive salary, bonus plan, Zynga RSU’s (Restricted Stock Units), ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan)
• RRSP Company Match Contribution
• Extended Health coverage, dental, disability, critical illness, EAP, and life insurance
• Virtual mental health and neurodiversity support programs
• Goodlife fitness annual membership
• Open vacation policy
• Family planning support program
• Generous paid maternity/parental leave
• Subsidized Back-up child care
• Zynga happy hours and frequent employee events
• Casual dress every single day
• Culture of diversity and inclusion including employee resource groups
• Work with cool people and impact millions of daily players

Zynga is an equal opportunity employer. We are proud of our broad community; we do not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, medical condition, disability, or any other class or characteristic protected by applicable law. We welcome job-seekers, players, employees, and partners from all backgrounds. Join us!

We will consider all qualified job-seekers with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law.

Zynga is committed to providing reasonable accommodation to applicants with disabilities. If you need an accommodation during the interview process, please let us know
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