Job Description
Penguin Random House wouldn't perhaps be the first company that comes to mind when you think of a career in Technology but here's a number of reasons why we think you should change your mind: we're the number 1 Publishing firm in the USA, likely globally, fresh off the back of an incredibly strong performance last year; we're going through a lot of change, particularly in technology, and have embraced and thrived in an environment new to us; we consider ourselves to be the pioneers of Publishing and are always looking for ways to operate more efficiently with creativity in mind; we feel like we're akin to a start up environment, but within an established business that's excited to embrace new processes and technologies – you have all the fun and excitement within a company that's tried and tested!
Data is at the core of Penguin Random House's success and has fast become an integral part of how we drive our business model. As the number 1 largest company in the Publishing industry, and off the back of an incredible performance in 2020, we're adding a number of positions to the Data Science team, starting with a Senior Data Scientist in a pricing focused role.
As a Senior Data Scientist on the team, and reporting into one of the two Associate Directors, you will have the opportunity to advance a number of strategic projects under the umbrella of pricing, including measuring eBook pricing elasticity, improving audiobook pricing, sales forecasting, and bulk deal pricing recommendations, among others. We're proud to be able to say that we're at the start of an exciting new stage within our journey, where you'll gain a LOT of exposure to more parts of the business than most in what is a highly visible group. Our AD's report into the Senior Director, who reports into the COO, so you'll regularly be exposed to C-level positions!
You will ideally come with a collaborative, R&D-oriented, and analytical mindset. The role emphasizes written communication and a continuous documentation of learnings, as well as the ability to convey complex technical results to a nontechnical audience.
Responsibilities:
While pricing remains the focus of your responsibilities, it also intersects with many other parts of the business. In addition to working closely with the Data Science team on these areas, you'll also need to collaborate regularly with decision makers across the business to tackle industry-specific problems.
At Penguin Random House, you will:
• Take full ownership of the current infrastructure around algorithmic pricing
• Optimize and scale the business impact of existing automated pipelines, identifying efficiency gains and taking the initiative to improve them
• Oversee experiment design and the causal inference workstream, from early data exploration to analysis and delivering results
• Measure and evaluate event-driven sales from promotions, digital merchandising, market shocks, and yearly seasonality in order to inform pricing decisions
• Study additional interaction effects with respect to pricing, with the goal of turning research findings into actionable recommendations for stakeholders
Requirements:
• An undergraduate degree in statistics, economics, mathematics, computer science, industrial engineering, data science, or a social science with a quantitative focus
• 4+ years of professional experience programming in either R or Python (R preferred)
• Aptitude with shell scripting, debugging tools, containerized environments, and any flavor of Linux
• Experience executing and managing field experiments; familiarity with probability-based sampling designs
• Familiarity with automated feature engineering, data imputation, and working with large datasets
• A track record of applied Bayesian modeling/inference or machine learning techniques to real world data
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to a business audience
• Proficiency using Git version control software to contribute to a shared repository/codebase
• Data munging skills; experience working with relational databases and fluency in SQL
As a Full-time employee, you'll enjoy our comprehensive benefits program which offers everything from incredibly generous time off including 12 company paid holidays, 10 sick days, 4 personal days AND 15 vacations days (increasing at years 1, 10 and 25), Medical, Dental & Vision through Anthem BCBS, 401k, student loan repayment program, Volunteer Days, and so much more. Oh and a TON of free books. There's so much to love about life at PRH, so come find out what a career within our Data Science team is like, apply now and show us why you're the best person to join the team using our online application process, and please be sure you attach you resume. We look forward to hearing from you!
Jobcode: Reference SBJ-rb7p36-3-235-227-36-42 in your application.