Job Description

The Community You Will Join:

We are seeking a Staff Data Scientist to lead the design, measurement, and optimization of our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and retention initiatives. This role sits at the intersection of marketing science, personalization, and lifecycle strategy. You will own the data-driven frameworks that define how we understand, engage, and reward our customers across channels.

You’ll partner closely with marketing, product, finance and engineering to design loyalty mechanics that drive incremental engagement and long-term value—backed by rigorous experimentation, causal inference, and machine learning.

Our team is responsible for developing the underlying science to design, build and deploy models that characterize, infer and predict customer behavior. We aim to deliver a timely, personalized and compelling experience to our customers.

The Difference You Will Make:

In this role, you will shape the scientific foundation of Airbnb’s CRM and retention strategy - translating business goals into measurable outcomes that drive engagement, loyalty, and long-term value. By leveraging Airbnb’s rich first- and third-party data, you’ll uncover deep insights into customer behavior and motivation, guiding data science direction for personalized marketing and lifecycle growth. You’ll design and evaluate loyalty mechanics through rigorous experimentation and causal inference, model the financial impact of retention programs, and optimize strategies in close partnership with product, marketing, finance, and engineering. As a thought leader, you’ll mentor other scientists and analysts, establish best practices for uplift modeling and CLV analysis, and ensure our programs are both impactful and measurable.

A Typical Day: 

• Leverage Airbnb’s and 3P data assets to generate a deeper understanding of the customer’s journey and motivation.


• Guide data science direction for personalized marketing, retention, and lifecycle growth.


• Translate business goals into measurable hypotheses—quantifying engagement, retention, and incremental revenue impact.


• Advise and mentor other scientists and analysts, establishing best practices for experimentation, uplift modeling, and customer lifetime value (CLV) analysis.


• Design programs that increase customer engagement and retention.


• Model customer behavior to forecast the financial impact of a retention program’s rules, benefits, and incentives.


• Partner with finance, product and marketing teams to simulate program outcomes and optimize design for engagement and ROI.


• Study and simulate marketplace dynamics to develop a deeper understanding of the travel industry ecosystem.


• Design and evaluate A/B and quasi-experimental tests for CRM campaigns and loyalty interventions.


• Develop causal inference models (e.g., synthetic controls, difference-in-differences, propensity matching) to isolate the true impact of loyalty and lifecycle initiatives.


• Work with engineers to productionize models and ensure reliable data pipelines. 

Your Expertise:

• 6+ years of relevant experience and a PhD in a technical field related to mathematics, computer science, causal inference, economics, predictive modeling or optimization, or 9+ years of industry experience with a BS/Masters in these same fields.


• Expertise in SQL, Python or R.


• Working knowledge of marketing measurement, lifecycle analytics, and customer lifetime value modeling.


• Deep knowledge of advanced experimental design and causal inference


• Experience with loyalty, retention, or CRM programs (subscription, travel, retail, or digital platforms preferred).


• Strong stakeholder communication and the ability to translate complex analyses into business actions.


• Advanced statistical and machine learning expertise (Bayesian methods, uplift modeling, causal ML).


• Proven record of leadership—driving cross-functional initiatives from concept to production.

Your Location:

This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Click here for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list . If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from.

Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belonging:

Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: reasonableaccommodations@airbnb.com . Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process. 

We ask that you only reach out to us if you are a candidate whose disability prevents you from being able to complete our online application.

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