Principal Data Scientist

What we are hoping you will bring

You believe in the mission and care deeply about helping people achieve more by communicating better. As our most senior data scientist, you will own the data function end to end: the infrastructure, the standards, and the judgment calls that decide what we build next.

This is a principal-level, high-autonomy role. You'll set the measurement strategy for a product whose core output is generated by LLMs, which means defining what "measurable skills development" means in numbers and then proving we move it. You'll be the person leadership turns to when a decision needs evidence, and the person the product team turns to when a metric looks wrong. You'll also help our customers quantify their own impact with Yoodli, which makes this work directly commercial.

You won't have a team to start, though you may build one over time as the role evolves. Either way, you'll raise the data bar for everyone here by example.

This role is hybrid with an expectation of 3 days a week in the office - you'll need to be based in the Greater Seattle Area.

What you'll do

• Own the measurement strategy for the platform: define the metrics that say whether learners are actually improving, and hold the company to them
• Design and run the experimentation program - A/B tests, holdouts, and rigorous LLM evaluation - and set the standards other teams build on
• Build the data foundation: pipelines, semantic layer, dashboards, and models that serve both internal decisions and customer-facing analytics
• Partner with product, design, and engineering to turn ambiguous questions into analyses that change what we ship
• Work directly with customers' BI and enablement teams so they can tell the story of impact with Yoodli inside their own organizations
• Build models that turn communication signal into product value - scoring, skill progression, benchmarking, and churn or expansion prediction
• Translate analysis into a clear recommendation for executives and the board, and defend it
• Set the technical bar for data at Yoodli: review others' analyses, mentor engineers and PMs on experiment design, and lay the groundwork for a team

What you'll bring

• 8+ years in data science, product analytics, or a closely related field, including time as the most senior data person on a product or business line
• Deep expertise in SQL and Python, and comfort shipping production-grade analytical code
• A track record of running an experimentation program, not just individual tests - power analysis, sequential testing, guardrail metrics, and the discipline to call a result null
• Experience evaluating LLM or other generative systems: building eval sets, designing rubrics, measuring quality when there is no clean ground truth
• Fluency with modern data stacks (dbt, Snowflake, BigQuery) and BI tooling (Looker, Mode, Hex, or similar), and the judgment to choose what a company this size actually needs
• Demonstrated influence on product strategy at the exec level - you can show a decision that went a different way because of your analysis
• Excellent communication skills, and the ability to be the clearest thinker in a room full of opinions
• Nice to have: speech analytics, NLP, or conversational AI; embedded or customer-facing analytics; early-stage startup experience
• Ability to be on-site at our Seattle,WA office M, T, and TH

Why Yoodli

• Mission-driven company helping millions improve how they communicate
• The data function is yours to define, with executive visibility from day one
• Collaborative, inclusive team with room to grow
• Competitive compensation and meaningful equity
• Base Salary: $200k - $220k
• Flexible work environment
• Startup culture