1. Core Technical Expertise (Non-negotiable)
Causal & Predictive Analytics
- Strong in lift measurement, incrementality, and experimental design.
- Able to frame business problems using appropriate methods (e.g., Bayesian, regression, uplift modeling, time-series forecasting, optimization, casual ML).
- Ability to quantify uncertainty and defend ROI confidence intervals.
- Strong experimentation expertise: geo tests, lift tests, synthetic controls, DiD.
Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM)
- Has built MMM end-to-end and have deep understanding on marketing media optimization, not just contributed.
- Experience scaling MMM across multiple regions/products.
- Experience presenting MMM outputs to executives and adjusting the model based on business feedback.
Search / tROAS / Value-Based Bidding
- Hands-on experience building or maintaining:
- tROAS models, geo experiments, incrementality tests
- Media spend optimizers and bid strategies
- Understands channel behavior and measurement nuances.
2. Business & Stakeholder Communication
The candidate must:
- Communicate complex modeling clearly to VP-level, non-technical audiences.
- Translate model outputs into actionable marketing recommendations (e.g., where to shift $20M).
- Defend model assumptions and ROI estimates under pressure.
- Demonstrate ownership of cross-functional stakeholder conversations.
This is where many technical candidates fail. We need someone who thinks like a marketing strategist, not only a modeler.
3. Marketing Domain Knowledge
Candidate must understand:
- Media channels (search, display, paid social, TV, OLV, direct mail)
- Funnel stages, attribution issues, incrementality
- Budget allocation logic and marginal ROI curves
- Creative impact and measurement
This cannot be taught easily—must have hands-on applied experience.
4. Hands-On ML + AWS/MLOps (Good to have)
- 5+ years Python/R/STATS modeling
- Strong with SQL and large data sets
- Deployment experience using:
- AWS SageMaker, Lambda, EC2
- Terraform (nice to have)
- Comfortable owning production pipelines (MMM, optimizers, segmentation, etc.)
5. Leadership & Ownership
- Can lead projects end-to-end with minimal direction.
- Can guide analysts or engineers and review their modeling work.
- Comfortable setting standards for MMM, creative measurement, and search models.
- Can influence marketing, product, and finance partners.