Senior Data Scientist - Behavioral Modeling

Why PlayStation?

PlayStation isn’t just the Best Place to Play — it’s also the Best Place to Work. Today, we’re recognized as a global leader in entertainment producing The PlayStation family of products and services including PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, PlayStation®VR, PlayStation®Plus, acclaimed PlayStation software titles from PlayStation Studios, and more.

PlayStation also strives to create an inclusive environment that empowers employees and embraces diversity. We welcome and encourage everyone who has a passion and curiosity for innovation, technology, and play to explore our open positions and join our growing global team.

The PlayStation brand falls under Sony Interactive Entertainment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation.

Senior Data Scientist - Behavioral Modeling

San Mateo, CA

As a Senior Data Scientist focused on Behavioral Modeling in the Product Data Science (PDS) team, you will be working at the forefront of data science to find new ways to identify and describe user motivations beyond standard textbook applications. Drive engagement opportunities across the PlayStation user environment and discover new information about our users that will advance our company’s ability to use data.

You will work with subject matter authorities, model validators, data journalists, and data engineers to use your knowledge of a variety of statistical, data mining, and machine learning techniques to determine the right model to build for each situation, extract appropriate features for each model, and develop, test and build models that are both valid and useful in order to inform decision making throughout the company and help create a personalized, enjoyable experience for PlayStation users around the world.

Responsibilities:

• Apply advanced statistical and machine learning techniques to translate business needs into reliable, valid models of user behavior
• Design, develop, and enhance predictive and behavioral models in order to:
• Identify moments or subgroups of interest
• Classify users or content
• Predict future behavior
• Drive personalization
• Identify patterns, anomalies, relationships, and trends
• Wrangle constantly changing, large, complex, high volume, high dimensional, sparse data
• Collaborate with business partners and subject matter authorities to ensure that developed solutions are reasonable, practical, and meet business needs.
• Work collaboratively with other members of the team to develop the most appropriate model for each situation and to determine each model’s constraints and failure conditions
• Work with engineers to apply and improve in-house solutions that support model development, production, and usage
• Mentor peers, coordinate work across multiple related models, and interact with both technical and non-technical partners
• Participate regularly in high-level, cross-group, collaborative problem solving to improve the quality of the models you develop, extend the ways the company can use data to drive experiences that delight our users, and cement the status of the team as leaders with vision

Qualifications:

• Sophisticated analytical and problem solving abilities and a flexible, curious approach to data
• Deep theoretical and applied understanding of Bayesian or frequentist statistics, data mining techniques, and/or ML techniques
• Extensive experience querying, manipulating, and analyzing a variety of different forms of data
• Understanding the importance of feature engineering and performance tuning and their impact on the reliability, validity, and interpretability of models
• Ability to make good decisions and a realistic understanding of the issues, use reason and review facts, identify inconsistencies and weigh options, and make logical and timely decisions
• Aptitude for and interest in working with other methodological experts to develop a deeper understanding of modeling principles, learn new modeling methods or approaches, and identify the most appropriate model for a given question
• Experience building models at scale or in an industry setting
• Strong commitment to the generation of useful, reliable information
• Interest in and ability to work collaboratively with people with substantively different ways of thinking and areas of expertise
• Collaborative problem-solving mentality and willingness to trade expertise with peers
• Expertise in any of the following areas is a bonus: video game industry experience, clickstream analytics, behavioral economics, political science, sociology, social network analysis, graph theory, data engineering

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