Founding Forward Deployed Data Scientist

Founding Forward Deployed Data Scientist

San Francisco, CA (4 days/week in-office) Full-time | Early-stage startup (Seed–Series A)

Salary: $200-250K + up to 3% equity

About Our Client

Writing code is easier than ever. Building software users actually love is still painfully hard.

Our client is an AI product engineer that watches every user session and listens to every piece of feedback — support tickets, sales calls, and conversations — and automatically turns that signal into clear, prioritized product decisions. Instead of digging through events and scattered feedback, product teams get a complete picture of what to build next and why , with the ability to launch PRs or run experiments directly from insights.

They are building for AI-native product teams and closing the loop between user behavior and code.

The Role

This is not a reporting or support analytics role.

As a Founding Forward Deployed Data Scientist , you will own product analytics end-to-end — from raw user behavior to executive-level insights that directly shape what gets built. You’ll work directly with founders, customers, and product engineers, often embedded in high-stakes product decisions.

You will build analytics frameworks, causal measurement systems, and internal tools that scale with the product — and you’ll ship them.

If you prefer clean specs, narrow scopes, or only running experiments designed by others, this role is not for you.

What You’ll Do

• Own analytics for user-facing product features from discovery to impact

• Synthesize behavioral data and qualitative feedback into clear product recommendations

• Work directly with customers and executives to understand needs and deliver insights

• Design and run causal measurement : A/B tests, diff-in-diff, matched markets, power analysis

• Build and ship analytics frameworks and internal tools used by product and growth teams

• Partner closely with engineering to connect insights → product changes → experiments

• Operate comfortably in ambiguity and take full ownership of outcomes

Must-Have Qualifications (Non-Negotiable)

• 4+ years of product analytics experience at high-growth, consumer-facing software companies

• Owned analytics for a user-facing product (not internal/support analytics)

• Proven experience delivering insights directly to executives and/or customers

• Strong product intuition — you generate hypotheses, not just metrics

• Advanced Python (tooling, automation, APIs — not just notebooks)

• Strong SQL and statistical foundations

• Deep experience with causal inference and measurement:

  • A/B testing, diff-in-diff, propensity scoring, matched markets

  • Statistical power analysis and sampling techniques

• Authorized to work in the U.S.

• Willing to work in-office in San Francisco 4 days/week

• Excited to join a very early-stage startup and take real ownership

Nice to Have (Top 5% Signals)

• Built analytics frameworks or tools adopted by product or growth teams

• Experience at early-stage startups (Seed–Series B)

• Hands-on experience with LLMs (prompting, embeddings, hallucination evaluation)

• CS or deeply technical degree

• Experience in high-quality product analytics teams at companies like:

  • Airtable, Figma, Notion, Slack, HubSpot, Atlassian

  • Meta, Uber, Airbnb (with startup or 0→1 experience)

What This Role Is Not

• Not a reporting or dashboard-only role

• Not internal or support analytics

• Not FP&A, finance, or non-software analytics

• Not a junior or early-career position

Why Join

• Work directly with founders who have built and scaled products at Meta, Airtable, Yelp, and WhatsApp

• Influence core product decisions from day one

• Build foundational analytics systems that define how the company operates

• Competitive compensation + meaningful equity

• Small, high-bar team with real ownership

Equal Employment Opportunity

TopTechTalent.ai believes that all persons are entitled to equal employment opportunities. TopTechTalent.ai recruits, hires, trains, promotes, disciplines and provides other conditions of employment without regard to a person's race, color, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity, or expression, age, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran's status, sexual orientation, marital status or other classifications protected under law or Company policy. This includes providing reasonable accommodation for team members' disabilities or religious beliefs and practices.

The government requires TopTechTalent.ai to maintain information on those who seek employment with the company, including their race and sex. Accordingly, to help us comply with this requirement, we encourage you to provide us with the following self-identification information. However, submission of this information is voluntary and refusal to provide it will not affect your opportunity for employment or terms and conditions of employment, if hired. If you do submit this information, it will be kept confidential and will be used in the compilation of data for reporting requirements.

🚫 Third-party recruiters, please do not reach out for this role.