Full-Time

Data Science Manager

Posted on 8/23/2025

Prolific

Prolific

1,001-5,000 employees

Platform matching researchers with study participants

No salary listed

Remote in UK

Remote

Category
Data & Analytics (1)
Required Skills
Data Science
Machine Learning
Requirements
  • 6+ years of experience in data science or related fields, with at least 2+ years of direct people management experience, including hiring and performance management.
  • A demonstrated track record of building and scaling high-performing data science teams.
  • A strong background in both product-focused data science (e.g., A/B testing, causal inference, metrics definition) and applied ML/AI (building and deploying models to solve business problems).
  • A clear perspective on how human data can fundamentally improve AI systems, with the ability to translate that vision into a concrete action plan.
  • The ability to influence stakeholders at all levels, from technical individual contributors to the executive team, and to articulate complex concepts clearly.
  • A strategic mindset paired with a hands-on, practical approach to problem-solving and a focus on delivering business impact.
Responsibilities
  • Recruit, develop, and lead a high-performing, diverse team of product and technical data scientists, fostering a culture of excellence, innovation, and impact as the team grows.
  • Define and drive the data science roadmap, aligning it with Prolific's overall product and company goals to maximize your team's influence.
  • Collaborate directly with executive leadership to identify breakthrough opportunities and translate the team's technical capabilities into a core competitive advantage.
  • Spearhead the creation of robust measurement frameworks, metrics, and experimentation (A/B testing, causal inference) to guide product development, quantify platform impact, and support emerging AI evaluation needs.
  • Go beyond the data to uncover deep, actionable insights from our unique human feedback data, identifying new product opportunities and strategic directions.
  • Guide the team in developing and deploying impactful models that solve core business problems and enhance the product – from optimizing feedback quality to modeling user behavior at scale.
  • Establish and uphold high technical standards for data science, ensuring robust, scalable, and impactful solutions are delivered consistently.
  • Partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Research teams to ensure the seamless integration and operationalization of your team's models and insights.
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience with behavioral data, human feedback systems, or AI evaluation is a strong plus.

Prolific operates an online research platform that connects researchers with a global pool of vetted participants. Researchers post studies and set demographic criteria to recruit eligible participants, who complete surveys and other research tasks to earn compensation. The platform uses a reputation-based system to ensure data quality from both researchers and participants. Clients include academic institutions, businesses, and individual researchers, making Prolific a centralized marketplace for human data in online research. The business model charges researchers a commission for each study conducted on the platform, covering participant recruitment, study management, and platform upkeep. Overall, Prolific aims to provide a reliable, efficient way to collect high-quality data for research and market insights.

Company Size

1,001-5,000

Company Stage

Series A

Total Funding

$33.3M

Headquarters

London, United Kingdom

Founded

2014

Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • AI training demand surge drives growth as companies require reliable human data for model development and testing.
  • Custom screening automation and participant allowlists reduce researcher friction and increase platform stickiness.
  • Series A funding enables geographic expansion and product development to capture emerging markets beyond academia.

What critics are saying

  • Scale AI and MTurk's cost advantage erodes market share in price-sensitive AI training and annotation segments.
  • EU AI Act enforcement starting August 2026 imposes strict compliance costs and participant data audit requirements.
  • Fraud rings exploiting screener systems damage researcher trust and inflate participant rejection rates significantly.

What makes Prolific unique

  • Prolific's reputation-based system and 120,000 vetted participants ensure higher data quality than competitors like MTurk.
  • Advanced screener logic with AND/OR conditions enables precise participant targeting for complex research requirements.
  • Established relationships with Google, Stanford, Oxford, and European Commission provide credibility and recurring revenue.

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Benefits

Remote Work Options

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

-10%

1 year growth

-11%

2 year growth

-13%
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