Senior Data Scientist, Lyft
Algorithm, Lyft Biz
$136.2-170.2k
More information about location
3+ days a week in office
Ride sharing company
Be an early applicant
Ride sharing company
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$136.2-170.2k
More information about location
3+ days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
To improve people’s lives with the world’s best transportation.
Role
Who you are
- M.S. or Ph.D. in Statistics, Mathematics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or other quantitative fields or related work experience
- 5+ years professional experience in a technology company setting involving a product
- Proven experience with building and evaluating time series forecasting and machine learning models, ideally in real-time or large-scale production settings
- Strong grasp of core ML fundamentals — feature engineering, model evaluation, and managing the bias-variance tradeoff
- Proficiency with Python and modern ML libraries, and experience working in a production coding environment
- End-to-end experience with data, including querying, aggregation, analysis, and visualization
- Passion for solving unstructured and non-standard mathematical problems
- Strong written and verbal communication; ability to align stakeholders and influence outcomes through reasoning and data
What the job involves
- Data Science is at the heart of Lyft's products and decision-making. As a member of the Science team, you will work in a dynamic environment, where we embrace moving quickly to build the world's best transportation
- Data Scientists take on a variety of problems ranging from shaping critical business decisions to building the machine learning models and algorithms that power our internal and external products
- The Forecasting and Real-Time Optimization Platform (FORTOP) team in Lyft's Rideshare Experience & Marketplace (REM) org provides reliable, real-time market supply and demand signals and forecasts that power the systems making critical automated decisions for Lyft's business
- These signals feed many of Lyft's most important marketplace products, including Dynamic Pricing, Real-Time Supply Management, Fulfillment, etc. As a Senior Data Scientist on FORTOP, you will improve marketplace efficiency by designing, training, and applying machine learning models that deliver accurate real-time and forecast signals under dynamic conditions
- We're looking for a driven Senior Data Scientist who is passionate about solving challenging problems with machine learning, and who is excited to work in a fast-paced, innovative, and cross-functional environment where they will take on some of the most interesting and impactful modeling problems in ridesharing
- Partner with Engineers, Product Managers, and Business Partners to frame problems, both mathematically and within the business context, and shape roadmaps across cross-functional teams
- Perform exploratory data analysis to gain a deeper understanding of the problem and the marketplace
- Develop, fit, and evaluate time series forecasting and machine learning models
- Write production model code; collaborate with Software Engineers to implement and scale models and algorithms in production, with attention to correctness, efficiency, consistency, and technical debt
- Design and implement both simulated backtesting and live experiments; analyze experimental and observational data, communicate findings, and facilitate launch decisions
- Define and uplevel monitoring of model and signal health; build and scale tooling that improves the efficiency of operational tasks\
Our take
Lyft has aimed for consistent growth, making sure to pitch itself as a more reliable and friendly ride-sharing option than its main competitor, Uber. Uber has a greater market share and operates globally, but Lyft hopes to compete by its focus on ride-sharing over Uber's more diversified business approach and as a more rider-friendly and greener alternative to Uber.
Operating only in the USA and Canada, Lyft is in a position of being less affected by global events than Uber but also more vulnerable to local conditions. As an example, while it doesn't face the regulatory hurdles around employment rights that Uber does, it is unable to balance out the cost of the unusually expensive US auto insurance across its operations.
In 2022, Lyft acquired PBSC Urban Solutions, a bike-share equipment and technology supplier, allowing Lyft to compete in new verticals and reaffirming its commitment to green transportation. It has also trialled and launched Lyft Assisted, where drivers help passengers from their door into the car to get to medical appointments. These developments chime well with Lyft's unique selling point as a friendlier and more environmentally aware ride-sharing app, whilst the acquisition of European competitor Freenow could add 6 million new riders to its platform in 2026.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-2% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 14 rounds)
Jun 2018
$600m
LATE VC
Mar 2018
$200m
LATE VC
Total funding: $4.9bn
Company benefits
- Great medical, dental, and vision insurance options
- Mental health benefits
- In addition to 12 observed holidays, salaried team members have unlimited paid time off, hourly team members have 15 days paid time off
- 401(k) plan to help save for your future
- 18 weeks of paid parental leave. Biological, adoptive, and foster parents are all eligible
- Pre-tax commuter benefits
- Lyft Pink - Lyft team members get an exclusive opportunity to test new benefits of our Ridership Program
- Family building benefits
- Lyft Pink - Lyft team members get an exclusive opportunity to test new benefits of our Ridership Program
Company HQ
China Basin, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
John Zimmer
(Co-Founder)Originally an Analyst at Lehman Brothers, Zimmer then founded Zimride which was a private ridesharing company that pivoted into Lyft.
Logan Green
(Co-Founder)Founded Zimride, a private ridesharing company which later pivoted into Lyft.
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