Senior Data Scientist

Job Description

ANALYTICS
What We Do
Our Data & Analytics teams build powerful stories and visuals that inform the games we make, the technology we develop, and business decisions that drive Epic.
What You'll Do
As a Senior Data Scientist on the Player Personalization ML team, you'll play a key role in shaping how players experience the game. You'll work closely with ML engineers, software engineers, product managers, and analysts to help build and evaluate a player foundation model that powers personalized in-game experiences, so that every player's journey through the Fortnite ecosystem feels more relevant, responsive, and fun. You will focus on iterating on models, running experiments, and refining recommendations that respond to player behavior as it evolves, moment to moment or throughout long-term play. You'll guide how we measure success, decide when models are ready for promotion, and ensure we make evidence-based decisions at every stage.
In this role, you will:
• Develop and refine personalization models to surface the most engaging and relevant Fortnite islands to players, helping shape what millions of players see and play each day.
• Help design and interpret experiments (using tools like Statsig) to evaluate the impact of models, not just on click-through or retention, but on broader goals such as ecosystem health and player satisfaction.
• Work closely with product managers and analysts to prioritize the most valuable modeling opportunities and ensure personalization aligns with player and business goals.
• Build metrics and evaluation strategies beyond standard A/B tests, including model-specific diagnostics, funnel tracking, and ecosystem-aware assessments.
• Partner with engineering and ML teammates on model development, helping iterate on specific modules or scripts while contributing to a shared long-term modeling vision.
• Play a key role in shaping how new content (e.g., islands) is evaluated, promoted, or demoted within the discovery funnel, ensuring promising content gets surfaced fairly and quickly.
• Contribute to the long-term evolution of Fortnite's player foundation model, helping build toward a personalization system that learns from every player interaction and adapts meaningfully over time.
What We're Looking For
• Proven experience applying machine learning or data science in a product environment, ideally with exposure to personalization, recommendations, or content ranking at scale.
• Comfortable programming in Python (more specifically PySpark) or an equivalent language suited to working with large-scale behavioral data, and experienced in contributing to production workflows with version control and code reviews. You should be confident working beyond SQL to build, debug, and iterate on modeling pipelines.
• Exposure to deep learning concepts and understanding how they apply to personalization or recommendation systems. Experience with sequence modeling or representation learning is a plus, but not required.
• Experience designing or interpreting experiments using tools like Statsig, and an ability to go beyond surface metrics to ask the right product and modeling questions.
• Ability to collaborate with product managers and analysts to frame modeling opportunities, and with engineers to shape how models are developed, deployed, and monitored.
• Familiarity with job orchestration tools like Airflow and understanding how models fit into broader ML workflows.
• Comfortable working with raw telemetry and designing event-level instrumentation to support modeling and experimentation needs.
Bonus:
• Experience working on recommendation systems in gaming, e-commerce, ads, or social platforms.
• Passion for games, creators, or player ecosystems, or a strong interest in how people find meaningful content in complex systems.
This role is open to multiple locations across the US (including CA & WA).

Pay Transparency Information
The expected annual base pay range(s) for this position are detailed below. Each base pay range is relevant only for individuals who are residents of or will be expected to work within the specified locale. Compensation varies based on a variety of factors, which include (but aren't limited to) things such as skills and competencies, qualifications, knowledge, and experience. In addition to base pay, most employees are eligible to participate in Epic's generous benefit plans and discretionary incentive programs (subject to the terms of those plans or programs).
California Base Pay Range
$170,588 — $250,196 USD
Washington Base Pay Range
$170,588 — $250,196 USD

Note to Recruitment Agencies: Epic does not accept any unsolicited resumes or approaches from any unauthorized third party (including recruitment or placement agencies) (i.e., a third party with whom we do not have a negotiated and validly executed agreement). We will not pay any fees to any unauthorized third party. Further details on these matters can be found here.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-r778jk-216-73-216-127-42 in your application.