Staff Data Scientist - Growth

About the Role:

Gusto is looking for a highly skilled and motivated Data Scientist to join our Growth Data Science team. In this role, you'll leverage experimentation, statistical inference, and causal analysis to drive strategic decisions that directly impact how Gusto acquires, retains, and grows its customer base. The ideal candidate is a trusted data storyteller with strong statistical and coding skills, and a passion for using data to help small businesses thrive.

You'll work closely with Marketing, Finance, Sales, and Revenue partners to become the go-to data expert for your growth domain — defining and tracking metrics that illuminate business performance, designing experiments that inform go-to-market strategy, and surfacing insights that accelerate growth. You'll also integrate AI-assisted practices to expand the reach and rigor of your analysis across the organization.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Strategic Leadership: Shape the analytical strategy for Growth product initiatives. Identify high-leverage opportunities, set long-term measurement and experimentation direction, and align executive stakeholders around data-driven priorities.
• Execution Excellence: Drive and execute on org-level analytical roadmaps that shape company strategy, leveraging AI tools and creating efficiencies through AI native approaches. Achieve alignment and ensure consistent analytical rigor and metric integrity across product domains.
• Scaled Impact: In addition to being an expert in statistical methods and driving impact through execution, you will drive frameworks for experimentation, causal analysis, and metric design that scale across multiple teams and influence org-wide decision quality in an AI native capacity.
• Thought Partnership: Serve as a trusted advisor to senior product, engineering, and Revenue business leaders. Anticipate emerging questions, proactively define success measures, and advocate for data-informed strategy across the org.
• Analytical Innovation: Push the boundaries of statistical modeling, experimentation, and AI-assisted analytics. Design methods and tools that expand how Gusto leverages data to drive customer and business impact.
• Mentorship: Mentor and coach more junior data scientists, raising the bar for analytical thinking and storytelling. 

Here’s what we're looking for:

• 7 - 10+ years of experience in Data Science at a product-focused software company.
• Strong SQL and Python skills.
• Proven ability to apply statistical methods, causal inference, and experimental design to real business problems.  
• Demonstrated experience leveraging AI tools like Claude, and executing work in an AI native way.
• Experience developing Machine Learning models is a plus.
• Excellent communication skills, with a track record of influencing cross-functional stakeholders and leadership.
• Demonstrated experience leading large, technically complex projects with clear business impact.
• A proactive, resilient problem-solver who independently structures ambiguous problems into actionable insights.
• Passion for mentoring others and raising the bar for data science craft across the team.
• BS/MS/PhD in a quantitative field (Statistics, Economics, Computer Science, Applied Math, etc.) or equivalent industry experience.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $187,000-$230,000 in New York & San Francisco Bay Area. Stock equity is additional. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.