Digital Marketing, Media, Advertising Technology

Staff Applied Scientist, AdTech

RemoteRemoteFull TimeStaffPosted 17 days ago

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Required skills

applied data science
measurable business impact
paid media decisions
spend
bidding
ad serving
attribution
reporting
loss function
architecture

Nice to have

real ad budget
live auctions
large-scale ranking
recommendation systems
non-technical partners
auction feedback loops

Role summary

We are seeking a Staff Applied Scientist to build and own models for our auto insurance click wall, optimizing carrier selection for conversion and managing media spend based on ROAS. This hands-on, individual contributor role involves framing business problems, data sourcing, model building, deployment, and monitoring, with an ML engineer supporting production. You will leverage your expertise in Python, SQL, and machine learning, including handling challenges like late labels, sparse data, and market drift. Success by year one includes scaled marketplace bidding and production models that adapt to changing objectives. Experience with AWS and explaining complex tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders is preferred.

WHO ARE WE?

Launch Potato is the discovery and conversion company. We reach tens of millions of people every month through our brands, including FinanceBuzz, All About Cookies, and OnlyInYourState. We turn that attention into real outcomes for our partners, some of the world's leading companies.

Our mission: create predictable, high-value customer acquisition at scale by connecting discovery, intent, and performance across category-leading consumer brands in finance, travel, and entertainment.

We run profitable and bootstrapped, with a South Florida HQ and a remote-first team across 18 countries.

WHY JOIN US?

You own outcomes here, not tasks. We measure work by impact, not activity. The pace is real, and change is constant, so the people who do best turn change into opportunity instead of waiting for it to settle. Feedback runs direct and lands with respect. Ordinary people make themselves extraordinary at Launch Potato.

YOUR ROLE

You'll build the models that decide which carrier each auto insurance shopper sees on our click wall. The goal is to send every user to the carrier most likely to convert them, so carriers see our traffic convert and raise their bids. You'll also own the buying models behind our media spend, which are held to ROAS.

Carrier conversion data (quotes, policies and acquisition cost) is now coming back to us, and you'll be the one who puts it to work in production. The hard part is the data. Outcomes land weeks or months after the click, many sessions are sparse, the same shoppers come back, and the market drifts. Our bids also decide which users we win, so the model shapes the data it learns from next.

This is a hands-on individual contributor role. You frame problems directly with the business, find your own data, build and validate the model, and stay with it through deployment and monitoring. An ML engineer works alongside you on the production side. Auto insurance takes most of your time to start, and scope broadens to other verticals over time.

We're remote first, and most of the company works East Coast hours.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

By day 60, you run our insurance marketplace media buying on your own.

By the end of your first year:

Click wall serving that matches each user to the right carrier

Carrier conversion data running in production models

Automated marketplace bidding taken from proof of concept to scale

A clear approach for repeat users and sparse sessions

Production models that hold up through drift and changing objectives

Output the business trusts and uses without rework

MUST HAVE

5+ years of hands-on applied data science with measurable business impact

Your models drove paid media decisions: spend, bidding or ad serving. Attribution and reporting alone don't qualify.

You built what's on your resume and can explain it down to the loss function and architecture choice, neural network fundamentals included

You see how today's bids shape tomorrow's training data, and you've handled late labels, sparse features or drift

You own models end to end: you find your own data, build through deployment and monitoring, and bring a point of view

Expert Python and SQL

NICE TO HAVES

Real ad budget spent in live auctions

Large-scale ranking or recommendation systems

Explaining tradeoffs to non-technical partners in plain terms

Designing for auction feedback loops, selection bias and exploration

Hands-on neural network work, such as embeddings of text, creative or user behavior

AWS for data science: ECS, S3, Athena, SageMaker

CI/CD deployment

Want to accelerate your career? Apply now!

Since day one, we've been committed to having a diverse, inclusive team and culture. We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity company. We value diversity, equity, and inclusion.

We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

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