Data scientist @ Scribd: Found our data team (SF)

Scribd is looking for a deeply analytical person to help us make sense of the wealth of data pouring into our servers. As the founding member of our data team, you will have broad ownership of data across the site - from financial to user behavior data. You'll be the front-line for people with questions about how various parts of the site are doing and will be in a position to unlock huge amounts of business value by spotting important trends.

Because of our unique subscription model, Scribd is perhaps the first company in the history of the book business to have extensive data not just on what books people buy, but on exactly what parts of a book they actually read. We plan to use this opportunity to draw unprecedented insights into reading behavior.

Here are some examples of the kinds of data questions we want to explore:

• What makes a good book recommendation? What signals can we use to do a better job recommending books?

• What insights can we provide to authors and publishers about what parts of their books are being read that will help them to write better books?

• How can we build a model to predict how valuable a set of books are to help us decide what content to acquire?

• What factors determine whether a user stays and engages with the product? How can we optimize the experience to delight every new user and keep them reading?

Our Ideal Candidate Has

• Highly developed quantitative skills, as evidenced by a degree in a technical field like math, physics, or computer science; or equivalent work experience

• Great SQL skills: you are a database whiz

• A strong business understanding: you aren’t satisfied with surface analysis, but drill down into data looking for what is “really” going on

• Great communication skills and the ability to translate general and under-specified goals into precise questions

• Development skills with one or more major programming languages

About Us

Scribd (YC S'06), based in San Francisco, is building the world's online library. Scribd has raised $26M, is profitable, and is one of the largest sites on the web with over 80M monthly users, but it is still run by a comparatively small team and still in the very early stages of achieving our vision for what the library of the future could be. We recently launched a subscription service that is widely being called the first “Netflix for books” and we’re very excited about it.

Applying

Just email us at jobs@scribd.com with "Data Scientist" in the subject. The founders review and respond to all resumes within 24 hours. We'd love to hear from you!