Data Scientist Customer Experience Product at Hopper

About the job 

We’re looking for a business-minded data master to join our team as a Data Scientist to drive data-centric product development and growth in collaboration with our high-performing team of Product Managers, and Software Engineers on the Customer Experience Product team. 

You will work closely with the team to build and deploy highly performant dynamic pricing models to personalize customer experience products to optimize for conversion rates and overall revenue. You will drive experiments and launch challenger models to test hypotheses and continually improve upon key business metrics. Hopper’s large user base often means that we can get statistically significant results within a short period of time post-launch, making this a dynamic role for a results-driven data scientist. 

You may be a great fit for our team if you’re a curious self-starter who thrives in ambiguity, is passionate about exploring the intersection of real business problems with huge (and often messy) data sets, and finding effective ways to simplify and focus on practical opportunities to deliver significant value to our customers. 



Minimum Qualifications

A degree in Math, Statistics, Computer Science, Engineering or other quantitative disciplines
Extremely strong analytical and problem-solving skills
Proven ability to communicate complex technical work to non-technical audiences
A strong passion for and extensive experience conducting empirical research and answering hard questions with data
A self starter mentality and the ability to thrive in uncertainty
Experience with relational databases and using SQL to pull and analyze data
Experience in Pandas, R, SAS or other tools appropriate for data preparation and analysis
Experience with statistical modeling tools and underlying algorithms
Experience with business reporting tools such as Tableau, Amplitude
Proficiency with Unix/Linux environments



Preferred Qualifications

Experience with revenue management models in travel a plus
Ability to break down complex business problems down to the data drivers
Strong ability to communicate models and insights to stakeholders
Comfortable collaborating with engineering to identify and own data science implementations in production
Able to design, create and measure consumer facing experiments 
Able to provide thought leadership on pricing and revenue management models
Able to create ETL pipelines and/or support engineering in the creation of ETL pipelines



Responsibilities

Frame and conduct complex exploratory analyses needed to deepen our understanding of Hopper users and what drives them to conversion and retention 
Create and deploy powerful dynamic pricing models that power Customer Experience product merchandising on the Hopper app 
Have ownership of the full data science lifecycle, including partnering with product, engineering and operations teams to deliver highly customer focused products. 
Use machine learning and big data tools on large and complex data sets to enhance our data-driven, personalized travel advice
Create advanced dashboards for product experiment tracking and business unit performance analysis using Amplitude, Tableau and BigQuery/Google sheets
Find effective ways to simplify and communicate analyses to a non-technical audience



Benefits

Well-funded and proven startup with large ambitions, competitive salary and stock options
Unlimited PTO
WeWork All Access Pass OR Work-from-home stipend
Entrepreneurial culture where pushing limits and taking risks is everyday business
Open communication with management and company leadership
Small, dynamic teams = massive impact
100% employer-paid telemedicine, medical, dental, vision, disability and life insurance plans
Access to a Retirement Savings Plan



Despite the pandemic’s impact on the travel industry, Hopper has emerged stronger than ever. As the travel industry continues to rebound, Hopper has seen its valuation more than double since early 2020, reflecting the strength of our mobile-only marketplace and the value customers are deriving from our proprietary suite of fintech offerings. 

Here are just a few stats that demonstrate our recent growth:

- Hopper’s valuation is now over $3.5B, reflecting the strength of its mobile-only marketplace and value customers are deriving from the company’s proprietary suite of fintech offerings.

- Based on its current run rate, Hopper is pacing towards 330% revenue growth compared to last year, and it has already surpassed its pre-pandemic revenue peak from Q1 2020 by over 100%.

- Hopper has over 60 million downloads, consistently ranks as one of the most downloaded travel apps, and now has a larger air travel market share in North America than it did before the pandemic (source: MIDT). 

- The company is on track to surpass $1.5 billion in travel sales this year, with 40% coming from the hotel and car rental categories. 

- Hopper’s fintech offerings, such as Price Freeze and Rebooking Guarantee, now represent 50% of its revenue. 

- Given the success of its travel fintech, Hopper recently launched a B2B initiative called Hopper Cloud, where any travel provider can unlock a totally unique revenue stream by seamlessly integrating and offering Hopper’s travel fintech.
 
The industry opportunity for Hopper Cloud is enormous as projections estimate that if all travel distribution channels offered travel fintech, it could increase the total consumer spend for the sector by $200 billion annually.

All this recent growth is just the beginning. There are still so many new opportunities we’re excited to tackle in the next year!