Lead Data Scientist Growth & Personalization

About Marley Spoon

Marley Spoon is a food-tech company helping people cook better, eat smarter, and waste less. We build meal kits using data across menu planning, marketing, operations, and logistics. We’re hiring a Lead Data Scientist – Growth & Personalization in Portugal, in a remote-first setup (with the option to join colleagues in our Lisbon office for collaboration days).

About The Role

Reporting to the VP Data & AI, you’ll lead a small, high-impact team of Data Scientists and ML-oriented analysts. You’ll partner closely with Digital (Product, Design, Engineering) and Marketing to build models that ship and drive measurable growth. In your first 12–18 months, you’ll focus on: owning personalization & recommendations, driving growth analytics & marketing effectiveness, reducing churn & improving retention, raising the bar on production ML, and leading & growing a small DS/ML team. You’ll champion an experimentation & data-first culture.

Key Responsibilities

• Own personalization & recommendations: Build, improve, and operate recommender systems that tailor menus, content, and customer experiences across our brands. Apply ranking, uplift modeling, and experimentation to help customers find meals they genuinely want—improving first-box conversion and repeat rate. Work with Product and Design to turn model outputs into simple, intuitive product flows.
• Drive growth analytics & marketing effectiveness: Create modeling and measurement frameworks for LTV, CAC payback, attribution, and targeting across paid and lifecycle channels. Partner with Growth and CRM to design and evaluate experiments (offers, onboarding, lifecycle journeys) and translate results into decisions. Support marketing investment choices with scenario analysis, trade-offs, and clear recommendations.
• Reduce churn & improve retention: Develop and iterate churn / reactivation models to identify at-risk customers and the most effective retention levers. Collaborate with Product, CRM, and Customer Care on targeted interventions, validating impact via controlled tests.
• Raise the bar on production ML: Own the full lifecycle of key models: framing, data selection, training, deployment, monitoring, and retraining. Partner with data/platform teams to ensure ML services are observable and reliable (versioning, alerting, performance tracking).
• Lead & grow a small DS/ML team: Mentor and coach 2–3 Data Scientists / ML-focused analysts, helping them own meaningful roadmap areas. Provide clarity, feedback, and a psychologically safe environment where learning and experimentation are normal.
• Champion an experimentation & data-first culture: Help teams design strong A/B tests, interpret results, and balance speed with rigor. Communicate clearly with non-technical stakeholders: what the model indicates, what it doesn’t, and where uncertainty remains.

About You

You’re a hands-on, technically strong Data Scientist who has already begun leading—and you’re excited about a role where you can both build and shape a function.

You’ll Likely Have

• 6+ years in Data Science / ML, including 3+ years in a lead role delivering production ML.
• Strong depth in at least one: recommender systems, experimentation platforms, growth analytics, or retention/churn modeling.
• Proficiency in Python, SQL, and common ML tooling (scikit-learn, XGBoost, PyTorch, or similar).
• Evidence you’ve tied models to outcomes (retention lift, conversion uplift, marketing ROI, operational efficiency, etc.).
• Familiarity with modern data stacks (cloud warehouse like Snowflake or similar, BI tools like Looker, ML orchestration/deployment tooling).
• Confidence communicating trade-offs, uncertainty, and results to both technical and non-technical partners.
• A practical, collaborative mindset—optimizing for what works, scales, and gets adopted.

How We Work

This is a remote role within Portugal. We do periodic in-person meetups (workshops, planning, team days). You can join sessions in Lisbon or other hubs—no weekly office requirement. You’ll be part of a Data Tribe spanning Data, Analytics, and ML across brands and markets, with peers who value craft, impact, and knowledge-sharing. Day to day, you’ll work closely with Digital and Marketing, converting ideas into experiments and models into shipped product features.

Please note: we’re currently only able to consider candidates who already have the right to work in Portugal. We’re not able to sponsor visas for this role.

Benefits

• 22 annual leave days + 2 additional days per year of tenure (up to 6).
• 5 training days per year.
• Private health insurance via Tranquilidade.
• Meal/food allowance of €7.62 per worked day via Coverflex.
• 24/7 confidential Employee Assistance Program.

Key skills/competency

• Data Science Leadership
• Machine Learning Engineering
• Recommender Systems
• Experimentation Platforms
• Growth Analytics
• Retention Modeling
• Python
• SQL
• MLOps
• A/B Testing