Principal Data Scientist | Candy Crush Soda Saga

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Job Description:

Principal Data Scientist

Job Description

We are looking for an experienced Principal Data Scientist, passionate about answering difficult problems and pushing the boundaries of game analytics, who isn't afraid to roll up their sleeves and dig deep into the data.  This person will act both as a senior mentor as well as an individual contributor. 

This is the perfect role for someone who has proven ability to apply their skills to generate business value, and wants to continue to grow their data science knowledge as well as their critical thinking, while mentoring colleagues to provide a meaningful impact on our game. 

Your Role Within our Kingdom

You will be part of the content team in Candy Crush Soda Saga, working closely with varied stakeholders in a fun, dynamic and fast-paced environment. 

You will possess the role of subject matter expert in data science while helping the team to further understand, model, predict, and segment the player experiences in our game. You will collaborate with game designers and product teams to identify potential opportunities (e.g. player behavior, game economy). You will also collaborate with, and mentor, other Data Scientists across the business to leverage insights from one game across multiple games, and ensure we are up to date on the latest algorithms and technology, continuously adopting and leveraging the best practices and cutting-edge solutions available in the market.
 

Specifically, you will

• Conduct analysis, lead analytical efforts, develop analytical methods, and advance the development of analytical methodologies
• Identify potential business opportunities, assess their feasibility and viability, translate business needs into technical requirements, analyse A/B tests and scope and build machine learning models and solutions where appropriate
• Be the pro-active owner of the entire data chain for your projects and investigations, and provide a data driven perspective to discussions and prioritisation within the team
• Communicate results to both technical and non-technical colleagues by generating dashboards, reports, and presentations
• Mentor other data scientists, conduct code reviews, and provide feedback on analyses

Skills to Create Thrills

Our ideal candidate has solid experience leading an analytical team in a commercial environment. There are plenty of opportunities at King for you to learn from your colleagues in the areas where you have less experience, and to share your own skills where you have more.

Specific factors that are helpful to excel in this role include:

• Leadership: The ability to mentor, guide and inspire your colleagues and drive best practices across the company
• Stakeholder Management: The ability to recognise dependencies, build relationships and influence others
• Business Insight: The ability to understand the problems and issues we want to solve, as well as identify those problems. Defining the right data, analysis or interpretation to be able to give correct recommendations and make the right decisions
• Communication: The ability to design good ways of communicating, visualising, and reporting the insights you find in a clear and unambiguous way
• SQL: The ability to write complex SQL queries to analyse our databases with 300+ million players and work with relational database systems
• Analytical coding: The ability to use tools such as R or Python for analytical purpose and model building. Experience with building libraries, analytical tools and implementing new statistical models in R or Python.
• Stats: The ability to understand and apply appropriate statistical and/or machine learning techniques. Deep understanding of probability theory, Bayesian statistics, and Machine Learning techniques
• Experience with AB testing 

Minimum requirements

• Expertise in data science, for example regression, classification, and clustering algorithms, time-series analysis, Bayesian methods, ML, deep learning
• A passion for analytics and diving into as well as experiencing the products on which you work (game enthusiasm with a solid understanding of the connection of gameplay and player behaviors is a plus)
• Solid understanding of statistics, e.g. statistical power analysis, group sequential testing, time-series analysis, quasi-experimental methods
• Experience in translating complex concepts into digestible content for a non-technical audience
• Solid communication and stakeholder management skills  

Tasty Bonus Points

• Good knowledge, genuine passion, and interest in gaming/tech/entertainment industry trends
• Experience in experimental design and game theory
• Predictive Analytics: Experience in segmentation and related areas.
• Randomized Controlled Trials: Working knowledge of randomized controlled trials (e.g., social science research, medical research, biostatistics, policy research) or digital A/B testing and online controlled experiments
• Proven eye for business with strategic and analytical capabilities, with experience in using data to help drive strategy and business decisions

With the holidays almost upon us and festivities in full swing, we hope you are looking forward to some well-earned time off us much as we are! We wanted to let you know replies may be a little slow over the festive period - but rest assured, we look forward to responding swiftly in the new year.

About King

At King, we're Making the World Playful. Heard of Candy Crush? We're the creators behind it. With game studios in Stockholm, Malmö, London, Barcelona and Berlin, and offices in Dublin, San Francisco, New York, and Malta, we have a 20-year history of delivering some of the world's most iconic games in the mobile gaming industry and are on a mission to level-up the little moments for our more than 200 million active monthly users. But we aren't just crushing it with candies, we're also behind Farm Heroes, Bubble Witch, Pet Rescue and loads of other sweet games. As a leading interactive entertainment company for the mobile world, King is part of Activision Blizzard, which was acquired by Microsoft.