Senior Data Scientist - Ads Auctions

Overview

The Ads Auctions team is responsible for innovating and enhancing auction mechanisms to create a competitive and transparent marketplace that benefits both advertisers and consumers. We focus on the full auction workflow—candidate filtering, pricing strategies, bid optimization, and selection processes—with the goal of balancing user experience with advertiser value. As a Senior Data Scientist on this team, you will be a core technical voice shaping how our auction systems evolve, driving improvements to our CPC (cost-per-click) infrastructure and bidding algorithms that directly impact advertiser performance and Instacart's ads revenue.

About the Job

• Design and own analytical frameworks that guide the evolution of our auction and bidding systems, including CPC pricing, bid landscape modeling, and reserve price optimization.
• Run rigorous experiments to evaluate the impact of auction mechanism changes—such as bid shading, second-price vs. generalized second-price auctions, and dynamic pricing—and translate results into actionable recommendations.
• Develop statistical and machine learning models to forecast bid distributions, predict click-through rates, and optimize auction efficiency across advertiser and consumer dimensions.
• Build simulations to model auction dynamics and stress-test proposed mechanism changes before live deployment.
• Partner closely with Engineering, ML, and Product to translate business and advertiser needs into well-specified model and system requirements.
• Enable objective decision-making by building dashboards and monitoring frameworks that surface auction health, advertiser performance, and CPC trends to stakeholders across the organization.
• Apply expertise in causal inference, mechanism design, and econometrics to ensure our auction systems are fair, efficient, and aligned with marketplace goals.
• Present analytical findings and strategic recommendations in a compelling way to influence Instacart's leadership and Ads go-to-market teams.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience working in a quantitative role at a product company or research organization, with meaningful exposure to ads, auctions, or marketplace pricing systems.
• Hands-on experience with auction mechanics, CPC or CPM bidding systems, bid optimization, or related ad monetization problems.
• Ability to run rigorous experiments and generate scientifically sound recommendations in the context of auction or pricing changes.
• Ability to write complex, efficient, and eloquent SQL queries to extract data.
• Ability to write efficient and eloquent code in Python or R.
• A desire to build and improve consumer software products and advertising platforms.
• Ability to translate business needs—from both advertiser and marketplace perspectives—into analytical frameworks.
• Eagerness to learn, flexibility to pivot when needed, savviness to navigate a dynamic environment, and a growth mindset to build a successful team and company.

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep familiarity with auction theory, mechanism design, or algorithmic pricing (e.g., generalized second-price auctions, VCG, bid shading, reserve pricing).
• Experience building or analyzing CPC/CPM bidding systems, budget pacing, or bid landscape models at scale.
• Awareness of business trade-offs when working on a multi-sided marketplace, particularly the interplay between advertiser ROI, consumer experience, and platform revenue.
• Confidence in collaborating with and influencing cross-functional stakeholders (e.g., Product, Engineering, Sales) at a senior level.
• MS/PhD in Statistics, Economics, Operations Research, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related field.

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