Sr. Data Scientist

Job Title:

Sr. Data Scientist

Requisition ID:

R024601

Job Description:

The Game Science and Machine Learning (GSML) team is adding a talented Data Scientist to work directly with our studio partners. As a member of the GSML team, your mission is to put science into decision making. You will work closely with game designers, engineers, business stakeholders, and analytics peers to derive meaningful insights and recommendations to improve game performance and feature design. Responsibilities include:

• Work closely with cross functional stakeholders to investigate topics related to matchmaking, overall game health, game engine, and hardware performance utilizing a full range of data science tools from descriptive analytics to, causal inference, predictive, and prescriptive modeling

• Evaluate the performance of various aspects of our game engine across the population as well as dive deeper into to individual anomalous matches

• Partner with studio and engineering teams to ensure smooth and timely instrumentation of engineering and gameplay metrics

• Work with stakeholders to design and analyze experiments

• Automate and productionize analysis and studies that improve long-term decision making   

• Deliver presentations on analytic topics and results to both technical and non-technical audiences

• Democratize and socialize learnings by contributing to a centralized repository that informs future game design, and is carried across titles and franchises

What you will bring to the team?

The ideal candidate will be a motivated data expert who wants to grow their analytics toolset in a fast-paced environment, is focused on delivering value to stakeholders, and has a passion for video games. Your success will be reflected in:

• Measurable Impact: Consistently demonstrating analytics impact on revenue, engagement, and player experience

• Relationships: As an embedded team member, team success is a priority. You will rely on your excellent relationship skills to build trust with your studio partners

• Communication: You will effectively manage your own time, stakeholders, and leadership expectations

• Translator: Your work speaks for itself; correct, clear, and concise insights leading to action

• Domain knowledge: As you understand our players’ mindset, you are reliably able to qualitatively deduce and draw quantitative conclusions that will directly influence decision making

Player Skills

• BA/BS degree required with technical focus (Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Physics, Engineering or a related quantitative field); MS/PhD a plus

• Strong technical skills with SQL, R/ Python for data analysis; demonstrated programming skills either in data science or software development settings a plus

• Strong understanding of AB testing and quasi-experiment methodologies

• Skilled at deriving narrative from data and communicate the results effectively

• Strong product sense; a solid understanding of user engagement and monetization strategies in gaming, entertainment/ecommerce service providers, or mobile apps a plus

• Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams

Your Platform

We’re headquartered in Santa Monica, California, housing multiple teams across many disciplines of Marketing, PR, Sales, Supply Chain and other corporate functions such as HR, IT, Legal, Facilities and Finance. Santa Monica is the nerve center of our company, where the best ideas combine with unrivalled rigor to create the biggest and best entertainment experiences in the world.

Our World

Great Games Start with Great People!  This is an exciting time to join us!

Ask anyone who works at Activision, or with Activision, their favorite thing about it, and they’ll tell you, it’s the people. We have world class brands, infrastructure and resources, but our success doesn’t come from assembly lines producing widgets. Our success comes from people producing greatness together. We are nothing without our employee’s brilliance. So, if you’re interested in our biggest priority, it’s the people.

Activision is more than just the leading developer and publisher of video games; we are the creators of some of the world’s biggest, most ground-breaking titles in the industry. Our portfolio includes Call of Duty® and Crash Bandicoot™.

The video game industry and therefore our business is fast-paced and will continue to evolve. As such, the duties and responsibilities of this role may be changed as directed by the Company at any time to promote and support our business an