Director, Data Science, Blu.

Job Description

Who We Are

Horizon Media, founded in 1989 by Bill Koenigsberg, is recognized as one of the most innovative marketing and advertising firms. We are headquartered in New York City, with offices in Los Angeles and Toronto. A leader in driving business solutions for marketers, Horizon is known for its highly personal approach to client service.  Renowned for its incredible culture, Horizon is consistently named to all the prestigious annual Best Places to Work lists published by Fortune, AdAge, Crain’s New York Business and Los Angeles Business Journal. Together we are building a place of belonging.

At Horizon, we understand the value that different perspectives can bring to our clients and culture, so we strive for an environment where our employees feel welcomed, safe and empowered. We value YOU and believe that your authentic voice and unique perspective allows us to create a more rewarding culture, and experience, together.

Our simple recipe for success? We hire talented people (thinkers, doers, dreamers, makers), challenge them and give them every opportunity to grow.

What Is blu.
blu. is Horizon’s omni-marketing capability that is powered by a Connected Marketing Platform, built in-house from the ground up.  The foundation of this platform is an Identity Framework built upon our relationship with TransUnion, whose PII data acts as our identity spine. By integrating with agency partners who have deterministic data assets we have licensed and attached 11K+ attributes to bridge the gap between martech and adtech to deliver a true 360 consumer view.  This enables brands to engage customers and prospects across all journeys.  Our portfolio of solutions and products are designed to complement a clients’ existing tech.

Proprietary insights tools enhance profiles with psychographic attributes and custom models identify and assign propensity against audiences based on KPIs.  We have a central, connected, user-friendly platform for insight development, audience creation and activation.  Our Solutions & Services are built on top of the Connected Marketing Platform offering bespoke capabilities across business strategy, planning, activation, measurement and optimization.

Job Summary

The Director, Data Science is a strategic and technically skilled senior data scientist tasked with leading a variety of innovative and investigative projects on behalf of Horizon agencies and their clients.  The role combines hands-on analytics expertise, people management and client-facing solution design and will define and influence Horizon data strategy and product direction. 

Leadership in this role often requires an ability to work cross-functionally with Client Architects and other teams key to the data acquisition through client presentation and will supervise a team ranging from 2 to 6 data scientists/analysts.  As a result, they themselves must demonstrate a collaborative spirit and strong communication skills.  They will be expected to become expert in all the data assets within Horizon’s proprietary Connected Marketing Platform called blu. and take ownership of specific data sources and client accounts.  

Responsibilities 

20% Leadership & Team Management

• Act as a collaborative partner to the business and all stakeholders
• Proactively engage to solve problems for our clients and to strategically impact the growth and success of their business results
• Managing internal timelines and set expectations on workstreams and projects
• Participating in daily standups ensuring they and their team are meeting delivery commitments
• Assigning tasks/projects to team members, estimate workload, understand capacity and utilization
• Proactively identify and, when required, escalate issues and blockers striving to avoid business/client impact
• Working with Client Architects and Data Solutions to outline all work required fulfill requests and generate outputs
• Coach and manage performance of direct reports
• Provide input to team training and development

20% Product Innovation & Management

• Operate as a Product Innovator and become a Product expert and power user, to drive continuing improvement in both in the analysis and results being supported by AI and the continuing custom solutions built on top and around those

• Experience with the ongoing operation and support of a Product in development and/or production

• Ability to ensure design principles that scale and can be repeatable and/or extensible to other clients or industries

• Experience with release management processes, including all levels of testing (Alph, Beta, QA, UAT)

• Ability to define features, models, queries and requests with highest value of automation and incorporation into blu+ product

30% Solutions Design & Innovation

• Ability to understand and leverage blu. structured and unstructured data
• Identification of new analysis techniques for accounts and categories of accounts
• Data transformation/mining and generation of insights to explain audience performance and inform optimization
• Data join process between blu audiences, media exposure and conversion events to build feedback loops
• Analysis of audience conversion to KPIs
• Model creation to estimate contribution of attributes driving conversion
• Validation of models used during the Audience Building process
• Assessment of audience duplication and incrementality by channel, partner, or tactic
• User/log level data extraction from delivery sources to create new audiences based on exposure to manage frequency
• Database(s) querying to extract exposure events and create a new audience based on exposure by paid media channel (digital or linear)
• Problem solving and development for new modeling and analysis techniques
• Increasingly utilize AI solutions to inform and expedite some or all of the required analysis

30% Technical & Analytical Excellence

• Advanced knowledge of dimensions & metrics (people based, behavioral and media data)
• Ability to understand and make sense of the relationships/connections across datasets
• Knowledge of the data dictionaries and taxonomies of structured data sets
• Understanding the applicability of research methods based on specific challenges
• Extensive experience in ML and different techniques of supervised and unsupervised learning ETL & EDA processes
• Understanding of the complexity of working with Big Data

Qualifications

• Master‘s degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or a related field.  Advanced Statistics and/or PhD a plus.

• 5-8+ years relevant experience, preferably in a media, marketing or digital advertising environment.

• Proven experience using data to build audience strategies and glean insights

• Working knowledge of Big and basic data mining routines a must.

• SQL/Python /R knowledge a must.

• Solid understanding of data technology integrations across data sources and ecosystems, and ability to troubleshoot.

• Experience working with digital analytics and audience insights reporting (Campaign Manager/ GA/ Adobe/GA360) - a plus. 

• Ability to work in a fast paced, multiple project environment on an independent basis and with minimal supervision.

• A team player who can work collaboratively within the group and across business units/functions.

• Proven management experience leading teams and direct reports.

• Excellent organizational, communication and interpersonal skills with an ability to work effectively with non-technical stakeholders.

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Horizon Media is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.  We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.

Salary Range

$170,000.00 - $200,000.00

A successful applicant’s actual base salary may vary based on factors such as individual’s skill sets, experience, training, education,  licensure/certifications, and qualifications for the role.  As an organization, we take an aptitude and competency-based hiring approach.  We provide a competitive total rewards package including a discretionary bonus and a variety of benefits including health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance, retirement savings plans, company paid holidays and unlimited paid time off (PTO), mental health and wellness resources, pet insurance, childcare resources, identity theft insurance, fertility assistance programs, and fitness reimbursement.