Data Scientist, SMB Ads Growth
- Salary
- $293K - $515K
- Level
- Senior
Not stated in the posting: work type, visa.
Open. First seen 30 July 2026.
About the role
About the Role
OpenAI's ads platform is experiencing rapid global scale. As the Lead Data Scientist for SMB Ads Growth, you will architect the analytics function end-to-end—driving strategy across targeting, funnel optimization, and performance forecasting. You will work directly with the SMB Ads Marketing team and your insights will be the primary catalyst for high-stakes decisions across marketing, product, and sales engineering.
What You'll Do
Full-Funnel Analytics
- Establish the foundational growth metrics and North Star KPIs for the SMB Ads ecosystem, optimizing the journey from lead acquisition to long-term retention.
- Diagnose funnel friction points through advanced behavioral analysis and quantify the incremental revenue impact of proposed optimizations.
- Partner cross-functionally to transform complex data findings into actionable, high-priority roadmaps for product and marketing stakeholders.
Targeting, Segmentation & Propensity Modeling
- Engineer sophisticated propensity models and look-alike frameworks to identify and capture high-LTV SMB advertisers.
- Own the lifecycle of target list construction, including advanced data enrichment, multi-dimensional prioritization, and granular performance tracking.
- Develop robust segmentation architectures that power hyper-personalized outreach across paid, partnership, and outsourced (BPO) channels.
- Synthesize market signals to refine our value proposition, ensuring OpenAI remains a key platform for SMB business growth.
Campaign Analytics & Measurement
- Design and implement rigorous multi-touch attribution and incrementality frameworks to evaluate channel efficacy.
- Lead the experimental roadmap: formulate hypotheses, execute A/B and multivariate tests, and communicate results to executive leadership.
- Automate business-critical reporting and dashboards to provide real-time visibility during weekly operating reviews.
Forecasting & Planning
- Build high-fidelity revenue and advertiser growth models to project performance against quarterly and annual targets.
- Simulate the impact of various growth levers—such as regional expansion and channel activation—to drive strategic resource allocation.
What We're Looking For
Required
- 5+ years of experience in data science or growth analytics within an ads platform, marketplace, or high-growth B2B environment.
- Proven track record of deploying machine learning models (propensity, LTV) that significantly moved business metrics.
- Strong SQL; proficient in Python or R.
- Experience thriving in ambiguous "0-to-1" environments, with a hands-on approach to building data infrastructure and processes.
Strongly Preferred
- Prior experience at a major scaled ads platform (e.g., Meta, Google, LinkedIn).
- Experience working in 0-1 environments
- A deep passion for artificial intelligence and proficiency in leveraging AI tools to accelerate modeling and insight generation.
About OpenAI
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.
OpenAI's standard text
We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.
For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.
Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.
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We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.
OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy
At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.
What this role asks for
Standard for data science / ML roles
Machine Learning · Python · SQL
Common in data science / ML postings at any company.
61% of this description is written for the role. The rest is OpenAI's standard text, folded away below.
Compared with OpenAI's other open jobs.
The team: Data Science HIRES STEADILY
This role is one of 18 open in Data Science. 3 were posted in the last 30 days and the oldest in January: a team that hires all year rather than one being built.
WHAT THE TEAM WORKS WITH, ACROSS ITS POSTINGS
Python (18 of 18), SQL (17 of 18), LLM (6 of 18), NLP (4 of 18), Generative AI (3 of 18), Cybersecurity (2 of 18), Machine Learning (2 of 18)
OTHER ROLES ON THIS TEAM
- Product Data Scientist - Youth, Families and Learning posted Oct 20
- Data Scientist, FinEng posted Oct 8
- Data Scientist, B2B Strategy & Intelligence posted Sep 30
- Analytics Engineer, GTM posted Aug 26
- Data Scientist, Real Estate & Workplace posted Aug 20
- Data Scientist, Cybersecurity posted Aug 17
- Data Scientist, B2B Demand Generation, Growth & Measurement posted Aug 6
- Data Scientist, Ads Demand posted Jul 30
- Applied Data Science & Insights Leader - GTM Intelligence Solutions and Technical Success posted Jun 11
- Data Scientist, Safety posted May 15
- Data Scientist, Core Experimentation posted May 13
- Data Scientist, Preparedness posted Feb 26
- Data Scientist, Financial Engineering posted Sep 30
- Data Scientist, Codex posted Sep 30
- Data Scientist, Platform and B2B Products posted Sep 30
- Data Scientist, Infrastructure posted Jul 22
- Data Scientist, Product posted Jan 24
From the team and dates on OpenAI's own job board.
See Data Scientist salaries in San Francisco →
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