Senior Data Scientist

Position Overview

Buzzer is seeking an experienced Senior Data Scientist to join the engineering team in support of the development and improvement of our proprietary algorithms powering the mobile application. This is a critical role on our existing data science team to build a scalable and accurate solution to serve customers personalized notifications regarding upcoming, interesting live sports look-ins.

This person will be focused on developing and scaling Buzzer’s personalized recommendation system. This system will be used to enhance Buzzer’s notification system by utilizing explicit and implicit user preferences to notify fans of buzzworthy moments across a variety of sports and leagues. The goal of these models is to trigger high-value, personalized notifications to users based on their preferences and usage data. This role reports into our Director of Engineering and will build upon the existing infrastructure created to develop and refine existing and new models.

This person should be highly self-motivated, able to effectively manage one’s own time, extremely collaborative, and highly communicative especially given our distributed team.

The Senior Data Scientist works directly with the Engineering and Product teams, and collaborates with the broader Operations and Partnerships teams.

In this role, you will:

• Research and Development: Research and develop a scalable, personalized recommendation system spanning each sport and league that we cover in order to trigger effective notifications. You will also conduct research and development related to league and sport specific modeling to better predict noteworthy sports moments.
• Scoping Data Needs: Define key user data needed to build an effective recommendation and notification engine. In preparation for partnership discussions, identify league-specific data needs to effectively detect exciting moments that have some degree of predictability. Represent the Buzzer team on league calls and articulate data requests and requirements for a successful customer experience.
• Model Enhancement: Contribute as a thought partner to the existing Data science team in further enhancing the model development process and existing league models. Evaluate existing models and processes to find possible improvements or potential bottlenecks.
• Onboarding and Personalization: Scope and identify what data Buzzer needs to best cluster/categorize its users for efficient recommendations and play an active role in discussions on how Buzzer should use onboarding data to send the best-personalized notifications.
• Coach and Mentor: As a technical competence leader, be responsible for coaching and mentoring data scientists across data modeling, machine learning, and other areas of their professional development in order to grow and level up the data science team.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years working with traditional data modeling and comfortable with leveraging multiple data sources
• Strong experience with Python and SQL
• Experience building and evaluating both supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms
• Experience working within a cloud environment like AWS
• Experience with statistics and or data modeling tools and analysis
• Working knowledge of Unix/Linux
• Working knowledge of source control systems, including Git

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building a recommendation engine or implementing a collaborative filtering system
• Experience using cloud-based services and big data technologies to support data processing pipelines such as AWS Redshift, EMR, Sagemaker, and Spark.
• Previous experience working in an agile environment with 2-week sprints
• Experience in working with clients or external partners to achieve mutually desired results
• Experience with sports media applications and or design
• Ability to self-motivate and manage up to report on progress and blockers
• Empathetic, values-driven individual who is eager to contribute to a broader team culture
• Master’s Degree in Engineering, Data Science, Mathematics, Computational Statistics, Operations Research, Machine Learning or related technical fields.

About Buzzer

Buzzer is a mobile first, notification-driven platform for live sports, personalized to the fan’s interests & preferences. We take fans from league to league and game to game instantaneously on their mobile device. Our technology, powered by micropayments, push notifications and authentication of existing Pay-TV/OTT subscriptions, allows us to deliver real-time content that reflects the true interests of each individual fan and removes traditional barriers to live viewership.

Our mission is to simplify the discovery and consumption of these live moments. We celebrate our community of fans who are fueled by their passion for sports. Founded in a hub of sports, our growing remote team respects tradition while valuing innovation. Our belief is that as a leading unifier of the sports ecosystem, we can foster togetherness through meaningful touchpoints & across generations.

About Strive: Buzzer’s Commitment to Social Impact

Strive is an intentional and impactful initiative that will utilize Buzzer’s unifying platform to invest in equitable outcomes for Black, Indigenous and People of Color. Buzzer is dedicated to leveling the playing field through our company’s mission, values, product and financial tools in order to create more opportunities for communities of color. Strive will serve as that vehicle for Buzzer to drive positive change and outcomes in our society.

Our Strive Impact Model is designed to invest in these communities through three strategies:

• Equity: 1% of the company’s equity will be protected and allocated to ‘leveling the playing field.’ This fund will ensure that Strive is prioritized and scales at the same rate of our growth. The reinvestment will support Strive’s mission, partners and causes. As our investment in this area grows, the company grows.
• Net Profits: 1% of net profits will be reinvested into partnering non-profits focused on enhancing and empowering Black communities and communities of color. This near-term solution is meant to partner and contribute to impactful organizations that are providing resources and support for our future leaders and customers.
• Consumer Engagement: Invite participation and engagement from each and every Buzzer customer to effect change through partnerships with non-profit organizations aligned to Strive's mission and vision. The ambition of this commitment is to leverage the Buzzer product to highlight opportunities for consumers to engage with and learn about organizations that are investing in communities of color.

Buzzer is proud to share that our first product was the Strive Mentorship program, a global mentorship program connecting over 500 industry professionals with over 500 Black college students predominantly from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other universities. This mentorship program ultimately inspired the Strive initiative and represents our ambitions to lead by doing the right thing for our potential customers, partners, and employees.

Buzzer is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

Learn More

Website: www.buzzer.com Twitter and Instagram: @buzzer