Lead Data Scientist

Philo is a small, ambitious startup building the future of television. Our product lets you watch your favorite shows on all the devices you care about, with intelligent search, insightful discovery, and effortless sharing — in short, we are building the TV watching experience that we’ve always wanted for ourselves.

We’re a company that puts people first — both our customers and the people on our team. At Philo, our philosophy is to empower our colleagues to do their best work and have a big impact on the product while supporting each other in a collaborative environment. We value pragmatism, pride in our work, and passion. We believe in having transparency and openness across all parts of the company.

We are committed to diversity and inclusion as we grow the Philo team and shape the future of TV. Promoting inclusion and diversity is a core part of our values, and we believe that a diverse set of voices and perspectives on our team enables us to build the best product for our customers.

Philo is headquartered in San Francisco, with additional offices in New York and Cambridge, MA. Our leadership team includes one of the founders of Facebook as well as alums of Meraki and HBO. Philo is backed by NEA and industry partners including HBO, Discovery, AMC, A&E, and Viacom.

Company and Culture

We’re a small team that puts our product experience first. We foster a flexible work environment that is supportive but allows for autonomy so that everyone on the team can help us build towards our vision. Philo engineers and data scientists own what they build from start to finish. We ship to production multiple times per day and keep unnecessary processes to a minimum so we can maintain our pace of rapid development. We value pragmatism, having pride in our work, and deep transparency at all levels.

The Role

Philo is looking for a Lead Data Scientist (Product & Experimentation) to join our team and help elevate our product analytics and experimentation practice. This role will provide senior leadership in building a world-class experimentation platform, establishing methodological rigor for product analytics, and mentoring our data science team to deliver high-impact analytical solutions that improve the user experience. You have strong opinions about what high-quality experimentation and causal inference look like and are passionate about building products that delight users. You can work across multiple product teams and have a keen sense of how to connect experimentation outcomes to product strategy and user engagement metrics.

Responsibilities:

• Set the roadmap and model best practices for product experimentation and A/B testing at Philo
• Lead the evolution of our experimentation platform (GrowthBook) and establish gold-standard practices for experiment design, analysis, and interpretation
• Partner with product leadership to identify and prioritize high-impact experimentation opportunities across the user journey
• Establish and evangelize methodological standards for causal inference and statistical testing
• Build frameworks for measuring product feature impact and user engagement metrics
• Coach and mentor data scientists on advanced experimentation techniques and product analytics
• Collaborate with engineering teams to ensure robust data instrumentation and tracking
• Lead complex analytical projects focused on user behavior, content discovery, and platform engagement
• Develop self-service experimentation tools and dashboards for product teams
• Champion a culture of data-driven product development and continuous testing
• Represent the data science team in product strategy and roadmap discussions

Key Qualifications:

• 10+ years of professional experience in data science/analytics with demonstrated proficiency in Python, SQL, and statistical modeling
• 3+ years of experience leading experimentation programs or product analytics teams
• Deep expertise in experimental design, A/B testing, and causal inference methods
• Strong experience with sequential testing, power analysis, and sample size calculations
• Proven track record of building and scaling experimentation platforms
• Experience with user behavior modeling, funnel analysis, and cohort analytics
• Excitement to leverage the latest LLM tools to improve workflows and efficiency.
• Experience in building robust data models for product analytics
• Experience mentoring data scientists on experimentation best practices
• Excellent communication skills with ability to translate statistical concepts to product teams
• Strong product sense and ability to connect analytics to user experience outcomes
• Experience with modern experimentation platforms and BI dashboarding tools
• Expertise in handling common experimentation challenges (network effects, spillover, novelty effects, SMRs)

Nice-to-have:

• Experience in media/streaming industry with understanding of viewer engagement metrics and content performance analysis
• Experience with multi-armed bandits, contextual bandits, or reinforcement learning approaches
• Familiarity with Bayesian methods for experimentation and decision-making
• Experience building data products for self-service analytics
• Experience with experimentation and feature flagging systems

More about Philo

At Philo, we’re a company that puts people first—both our subscribers and our team. We empower our colleagues to do their best work while supporting one another in pursuing shared goals. We value pragmatism, pride in our work, and passion, with transparency and openness as fundamental parts of our culture.

We’re committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility as we grow the Philo team and shape the future of TV. We believe that a diverse range of voices and perspectives enables us to innovate faster and create the best experiences for our subscribers. Philo is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We’re committed to supporting every candidate and employee. If you need an accommodation at any stage of the process, please email [email protected] and we’ll work with you to meet your needs.

Philo offers 70+ top-rated networks, including AMC, BET, CMT, Comedy Central, Discovery Channel, Food Network, Hallmark Channel, HGTV, HISTORY, Investigation Discovery, Lifetime, MTV, Nickelodeon, OWN, VH1, We TV, and more. It also includes all the groundbreaking originals and blockbuster movies available with AMC+ and access to HBO Max Basic With Ads and discovery+. Our service also includes 100+ free channels and premium add-ons like STARZ and MGM+.

Our extensive library boasts over 85,000 titles, and our unlimited DVR allows users to save their favorite shows and movies for up to a year, skipping ads for a seamless viewing experience. Stream on up to three devices simultaneously, whether on your phone, tablet, laptop, or TV using Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, Samsung TV, Android TV, Vizio TV, or Chromecast.

Philo is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York and Cambridge, MA. Our leadership team includes a Facebook co-founder and alums from Meraki and HBO, backed by NEA and industry partners like Discovery, Viacom, AMC, and A&E.

Join us at Philo and be part of a team that's shaping the future of TV!

Projected Start Date: ASAP
Status: Full-time
Location: San Francisco, CA, Brooklyn, NY, Cambridge, MA, or fully remote within the U.S.
Compensation: Includes annual salary between $172K-$237K depending on experience and location, company stock options, and health benefits

We value a diverse and inclusive workplace and we welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, skills, and perspectives. Philo is an equal opportunity employer. We believe that everyone does their best work when they are supported by each other and the company, and we offer a generous set of benefits to make sure the Philo team is happy and healthy. Here is a sampling of the benefits we offer our team:

• Full health, dental and vision coverage for you and your family
• 401(k) plan with employer contributions (we match 100% of deferrals up to 3% of pay and 50% of the next 2% of pay)
• Flexible working hours
• Up to 20 weeks of fully paid parental leave
• Unlimited paid time off for vacation and sick leave
• $2,000 annual vacation bonus (we pay you to take a two week vacation)
• $5,250 annually for professional development and educational assistance
• $1,250 annual home office + TV stipend during first year of employment ($250 annually thereafter)
• $500/month ($6,000/year) bonus for employees who commit to working at least 3 days per week in our offices, plus generous commuter benefits ($315/month towards transit, rideshare, bike rental, or parking at our HQ office in San Francisco)
• Free Gympass subscription — an all-in-one corporate benefit that gives employees the largest selection of gyms, studios, classes, training and wellness apps
• Dog-friendly office
• And much more!

For California Residents: Philo’s CCPA Notice at Collection – Employees, Applicants, Owners, Directors, Officers and Contractors

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.