Staff Data Scientist, Lead Generation

Launch Potato is the discovery and conversion company. We reach tens of millions of people every month through our brands including FinanceBuzz All About Cookies and OnlyInYourState. We turn that attention into real outcomes for our partners some of the worlds leading companies.

Our mission: create predictable high-value customer acquisition at scale by connecting discovery intent and performance across category-leading consumer brands in finance travel and entertainment.

We run profitable and bootstrapped with a South Florida HQ and a remote-first team across 18 countries.

You own outcomes here not tasks. We measure work by impact not activity. The pace is real and change is constant so the people who do best turn change into opportunity instead of waiting for it to settle. Feedback runs direct and lands with respect. Ordinary people make themselves extraordinary at Launch Potato.

BASE SALARY: $175000 to $200000 per year paid semi-monthly

YOUR ROLE

Youll build the models that decide which carrier each auto insurance shopper sees on our click wall. The goal is to send every user to the carrier most likely to convert them so carriers see our traffic convert and raise their bids. Youll also own the buying models behind our media spend which are held to ROAS.

Carrier conversion data (quotes policies and acquisition cost) is now coming back to us and youll be the one who puts it to work in production. The hard part is the data. Outcomes land weeks or months after the click many sessions are sparse the same shoppers come back and the market drifts. Our bids also decide which users we win so the model shapes the data it learns from next.

This is a hands-on individual contributor role. You frame problems directly with the business find your own data build and validate the model and stay with it through deployment and monitoring. An ML engineer works alongside you on the production side. Auto insurance takes most of your time to start and scope broadens to other verticals over time.

Were remote first and most of the company works East Coast hours.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

By day 60 you run our insurance marketplace media buying on your own.

By the end of your first year:

• Click wall serving that matches each user to the right carrier
• Carrier conversion data running in production models
• Automated marketplace bidding taken from proof of concept to scale
• A clear approach for repeat users and sparse sessions
• Production models that hold up through drift and changing objectives
• Output the business trusts and uses without rework

MUST HAVE

• 5 years of hands-on applied data science with measurable business impact
• Your models drove paid media decisions: spend bidding or ad serving. Attribution and reporting alone dont qualify.
• You built whats on your resume and can explain it down to the loss function and architecture choice neural network fundamentals included
• You see how todays bids shape tomorrows training data and youve handled late labels sparse features or drift
• You own models end to end: you find your own data build through deployment and monitoring and bring a point of view
• Expert Python and SQL

NICE TO HAVES

• Real ad budget spent in live auctions
• Large-scale ranking or recommendation systems
• Explaining tradeoffs to non-technical partners in plain terms
• Designing for auction feedback loops selection bias and exploration
• Hands-on neural network work such as embeddings of text creative or user behavior
• AWS for data science: ECS S3 Athena SageMaker
• CI/CD deployment

TOTAL COMPENSATION

Base salary is set according to market rates for the nearest major metro and varies based on Launch Potatos Levels Framework. Your compensation package includes a base salary profit-sharing bonus and competitive benefits. Launch Potato is a performance-driven company which means once you are hired future increases will be based on company and personal performance not annual cost of living adjustments.

Want to accelerate your career Apply now!

Since day one weve been committed to having a diverse inclusive team and culture. We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity company. We value diversity equity and inclusion.

We do not discriminate based on race religion color national origin gender (including pregnancy childbirth or related medical conditions) sexual orientation gender identity gender expression age status as a protected veteran status as an individual with a disability or other applicable legally protected characteristics.