[Remote] Principal Data Scientist - Rentals Shopping
Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Zillow Group is on a mission to empower people in their real estate journeys, and they are seeking a Principal Data Scientist to lead the Rentals Shopping pillar. This role involves driving data strategy, partnering with product leadership, and leveraging data science to enhance the rental shopping experience for millions of users.
Responsibilities
- Drive the long‑term data strategy for the Rentals Shopping pillar, using deep analysis of consumer behavior and market dynamics to identify high‑impact growth opportunities and inform the product roadmap
- Elevate statistical rigor, modeling, and experimentation practices across Rentals to enable high‑confidence decision‑making
- Partner with product, engineering, and design leaders to translate complex analysis into clear, actionable product and business strategies
- Lead analytical and modeling work across critical problem spaces such as rental search relevance, ranking, personalization, or marketplace efficiency
- Design and guide robust A/B tests and other experimentation frameworks to measure the impact of new features and optimizations in the rental shopping experience
- Apply modern AI (including LLMs and agentic workflows) to increase data science velocity, improve model quality, and scale intelligent user-facing solutions across the Rentals marketplace
- Coach and mentor data scientists, providing technical leadership and helping to unblock complex analytical and modeling challenges
Skills
- Ph.D. or Master's degree in a quantitative field (e.g., Statistics, Economics, Computer Science), or equivalent practical experience
- Substantial experience (typically 8+ years) in quantitative analysis, advanced modeling, and experimentation at scale in consumer‑facing technology environments
- Technical skills: Expert in SQL and Python, with experience applying statistical modeling (e.g., causal inference, time series) in big data environments such as Databricks or Snowflake
- Product and business impact: Proven track record of shaping long‑term product roadmaps and driving meaningful business outcomes through data‑driven insights
- Leadership and communication: Ability to influence senior cross‑functional leaders and turn complex analysis into clear, executive‑ready recommendations and action plans
- High initiative and ownership: Comfortable leading in a complex business area with significant autonomy, setting direction and driving execution across partners
Benefits
- In addition to a competitive base salary this position is also eligible for equity awards based on factors such as experience, performance and location.
- Employees in this role will not be paid below the salary threshold for exempt employees in the state where they reside.
- This role has been categorized as a Remote position.
- “Remote” employees do not have a permanent corporate office workplace and, instead, work from a physical location of their choice, which must be identified to the Company.
Company Overview
Company H1B Sponsorship