Senior Data Scientist
About Buffer
We create social media and brand-building software for small businesses, creators, and individuals. Our mission is to provide essential tools to help small businesses get off the ground and grow. Through exceptional customer service and uplifting content, we help our customers believe they can succeed and do good along the way.
Buffer is a fully distributed team, and we’ve always aimed to do things a little differently at Buffer. Since the early days, we’ve focused on building one of the most unique and fulfilling workplaces by rethinking a lot of traditional practices. We also default to transparency, so you can read all about our metrics, and our successes and failures along the way on our Transparency Dashboard.
We're united by Buffer's values, and we hire and work from all over the world. We strive to create a diverse and inclusive work environment, and we are building a culture where underrepresented groups are welcome and can flourish. Please note that we do travel to work together in person once or twice per year, and those events are highly encouraged to build deeper connections among our small team.
As you get to know Buffer and consider joining the journey, feel free to read more from Kirsti and Sabreen as they share their first experiences with Buffer, as well as from Hailley, who captured why she still calls Buffer home after 8+ years.
About the role:
We’re looking for a Senior Data Scientist to help Buffer scale how we use data to make better product and growth decisions.
This role sits at the intersection of product, growth, and strategy. You’ll be our primary Data Scientist, partnering closely with teams across the company to answer important questions, evaluate impact, and uncover new opportunities. In the near term, that includes supporting core analytical needs across product and growth. Over time, the goal is to reduce ad-hoc dependency by building better models, systems, and enablement that allow more teams to work effectively with data.
You’ll build behavioural and business models, lead research and experimentation, and help evolve our metrics, definitions, and data foundations. Your work will influence what we build, how we experiment, and how we define success across critical initiatives.
As a senior individual contributor, you’ll be both hands-on and highly influential. You’ll have a strategic seat across key initiatives and be expected to bring opinion, curiosity, and judgment to ambiguous problems, not just execute requests.
Because we’re a small team, leverage matters. We’re especially excited about candidates who use AI-assisted workflows and thoughtful abstractions to decentralize data access, improve self-serve analytics, and scale the impact of data beyond a single person.
This is a role for someone who enjoys ambiguity, cares deeply about impact, and is excited to help a product-led company become more insight-driven over time.
Who you'll work with:
In this role, you’ll report to Simon Heaton, Director of Growth Marketing, and work closely with leaders across product, engineering, marketing, and design.
You’ll partner daily with product managers and engineers to support product discovery, experimentation, and measurement. You’ll collaborate with growth marketing, lifecycle, and content teams to model acquisition, activation, retention, and monetization. You’ll also work closely with other data-focused teammates to evolve our analytics foundations and decision-making practices.
We’re a small, highly collaborative team. This role requires strong ownership, comfort working autonomously, and a genuine enjoyment of cross-functional problem-solving.
This is a remote role, open to candidates anywhere.
What you’ll do
Serve as Buffer’s primary Data Scientist, supporting product and growth teams with analysis that informs decisions and prioritization
Build and maintain behavioural and business models across acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, and monetization
Lead complex analyses and research to identify product and growth opportunities, not just validate existing ideas
Design, analyze, and interpret experiments across product and growth initiatives, including A/B tests and incrementality studies
Partner with cross-functional teams to define success metrics, evaluation frameworks, and clear decision criteria
Develop reusable datasets, models, and reporting patterns that reduce ad-hoc requests and increase self-serve capability
Help evolve Buffer’s data systems, definitions, and measurement approach as we invest in analytics product features and personalization
Use AI-assisted tools to streamline analysis, accelerate insight generation, and make data more accessible across the organization
Communicate findings through clear narratives, documentation, and recommendations that influence decisions at multiple levels
Qualifications
You care deeply about creators, small businesses, and individuals, and are motivated by helping them succeed through better product and data-informed decisions
Significant experience as a Data Scientist (or equivalent) in a SaaS or product-led growth (PLG) environment, with a strong understanding of SaaS metrics, growth loops, and monetization dynamics
Deep hands-on experience with modern analytics stacks, including SQL-based data warehouses (BigQuery preferred; Snowflake or Redshift also relevant), BI tools such as Metabase, Mixpanel, Looker, or Mode, data transformation frameworks like dbt, and event tracking platforms like Segment
Strong foundation in statistical analysis and causal reasoning, with fluency in SQL and advanced experience using Python or R for analysis, modelling, and data visualization
Proven track record of owning complex, ambiguous analytical problems end-to-end, from framing and data exploration through to recommendations that influence product and business decisions
Experience designing, analyzing, and interpreting experiments, including A/B testing, incrementality, and causal analyses, with a strong sense of methodological tradeoffs
Experience building and maintaining analytical models across the full customer lifecycle, including acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, and monetization
Demonstrated ability to balance high-impact strategic work with day-to-day analytical support, while systematically reducing ad hoc requests through better tooling, documentation, and self-serve systems
Strong cross-functional partner to product managers, marketers, engineers, and designers, able to influence direction through data rather than operating as a service function
Skilled at translating complex, messy data and ambiguous questions into clear metrics, narratives, and actionable insights for a wide range of stakeholders
High degree of ownership and judgment, comfortable acting as the primary or most senior Data Scientist within a small team and shaping how data work gets done
Experience leveraging modern data and AI-assisted tools to increase analytical leverage, improve insight accessibility, and scale impact across the organization
Interview process
Do you believe you're a fit for this role and want to join the Buffer team? We'd love to hear about you!
Here's what our hiring process for this role is like.
Application. When submitting your application and resume, tell us why you want to join Buffer and take your time. This is your chance to make a strong first impression.
First Interview. Interview with Luke Clark, Senior Hiring Specialist. This will be a exploratory conversation focused on how Buffer works, how you work, and alignment on values and expectations.
Role interview. Chat with Simon Heaton, Director of Growth marketing and Julian Winternheimer, Senior Data Scientist to understand what it takes to work at Buffer. This is an opportunity for both sides to get to know each other and determine whether our expectations align.
Data assignment. We'll send you an asynchronous assignment to review a pull request, to help us understand how you think about code and communicate technical ideas.
Technical interviews. Interview with Julian, and Mike San Roman, Director of Engineering, focused on your technical experience and approach. Additionally, for senior roles, we'll have an additional conversation about your leadership, how you work with teams, and how you approach the broader challenges that come with this level.
Meet the CEO (~60 mins). Then, you will have the opportunity to meet with Joel Gascoigne, our CEO. This is a great chance for you to gain a deeper understanding of Buffer's strategy, values, and work processes.
Collaboration period. This is an experimental stage for us where you would work with us on a real project over 1 day (fully paid). The goal is to see how it feels to work in the team, both for us and for you. You'll meet a few bufferoos, we'll kickoff the project, and invite you to a Slack and you'll collaborate with the team on it.
Offer. We wrap it up with an offer and discuss the final details. We would align on the last bits before we make you part of the Buffer team 💛
At Buffer, we value diversity of experience, and we understand that comes in many forms. We’re dedicated to adding new perspectives to the team. So, if your experience is close to what we’re looking for, please consider applying.
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