Principal, Insights & Innovation

About the Role

The Principal, Insights & Innovation at Samba pairs deep data and statistical expertise with strong business acumen to develop cutting-edge solutions and thought leadership in media intelligence. This role operates within the Insights & Innovation team, serving both internal teams (Sales, Product, Engineering, Marketing) and external customers, focusing on forward-looking solutions that incorporate AI and agentic workflows.

Responsibilities

• Design and build new media intelligence solutions using internal Samba data assets and external data sourced through licensing and partnerships.
• Partner with Samba’s sales team to conduct customer discovery, ideation, and solutions development, translating business needs into well-scoped analytic and product concepts.
• Monitor industry trends and the competitive landscape to identify market direction and opportunities for Samba to lead.
• Apply appropriate statistical methods (descriptive, inferential, predictive) with rigor in model selection, tuning, and performance.
• Develop personalized, interactive client deliverables, such as browser-based dashboards using JavaScript and React.
• Incorporate AI and agentic workflows into solutions, including data embeddings, vector databases, and multimodal models.
• Support thought leadership and conduct partnership-based research to strengthen Samba's industry position.
• Prototype quickly, validate with customers, and prepare solutions for templating and scaling by the broader team.
• Apply Samba methodology to billions of raw data signals to help customers make data-driven media decisions.

Requirements

• Education: Bachelor's degree in a quantitative field (analytics, statistics, data science, computer science, mathematics) or equivalent practical experience; advanced degree is a plus.
• Work Experience: 4–6 years in data science, analytics, computer science, or applied research, with experience building and shipping data-driven applications and presenting results to stakeholders.
• Industry Knowledge: Media, advertising, or measurement experience, including cross-channel focus on CTV, addressable audiences, contextual targeting, attribution, and causal inference.

Qualifications

• Behaviors and Values: Curiosity, strong bias to build, ownership, customer obsession, forward-looking mindset, cross-functional collaboration, comfort with ambiguity and rapid iteration.
• Personality and Communication: Exceptional storytelling and presentation skills, ability to distill complex statistical work into simple narratives, consultative approach, credibility with customers and sellers, ability to influence without authority.
• Hard Skills (Required): Python, SQL, descriptive/inferential/predictive statistics, BI tools (Tableau, Looker, Power BI), JavaScript, React.
• Hard Skills (Preferred): Developing agentic workflows, data embeddings, vector databases, multimodal model applications.

Pay

Samba expects to offer a base salary between $120,000 - $150,000 per year for roles in New York or California. Actual salary depends on factors like location, experience, and performance. Total compensation includes bonuses, incentives, and benefits such as health insurance, wellness offerings, retirement savings, and paid time off.