Who you are

- Advanced degree (MS or PhD, PhD preferred) in a quantitative field like Operations Research, Applied Math, Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering, or a related area; or equivalent work experience

- Passion for solving unstructured and non-standard mathematical problems, with 2+ years of hands-on experience in optimization (preferred), causal inference, or machine learning

- End-to-end experience with data, including querying, aggregation, analysis, and visualization

- Proficiency with Python
- Strong ability to collaborate and communicate with others in a team setting

- Experience seeking out and adopting new methods and techniques

- Experience designing, running, and analyzing A/B tests to validate hypotheses and inform decision-making

What the job involves

- As a Data Scientist specializing in Algorithms, you'll partner closely with product, engineering, and operations leaders to build and scale incentive systems, shape long-term mechanism design strategy, and deliver on critical business goals tied to marketplace efficiency and driver earnings.

- Candidates with strong optimization backgrounds — think mathematical programming, control theory, or operations research — are a great fit, though we welcome strong candidates from machine learning or causal inference as well.

- The ideal candidate thrives in a fast-paced environment and brings a hands-on, entrepreneurial mindset to drive results





- Collaborate with engineering and product teams to design, implement, and iterate on new features and algorithmic improvements for driver incentives and pay mechanisms

- Design, develop, and deploy optimization models, algorithms, and systems for problems such as budget allocation, multidimensional cost-curve development, and incentive targeting

- Write production model code; collaborate with Software Engineers to implement algorithms in production

- Perform exploratory data analysis to gain a deeper understanding of the marketplace and its users

- Communicate findings and facilitate launch decisions with technical and non-technical stakeholders

- Ensure robust experimentation and causal inference methodologies are applied to measure the impact of new features and strategies

Benefits

- Great medical, dental, and vision insurance options

- Mental health perks
- In addition to 12 observed holidays, salaried team members have unlimited paid time off, hourly team members have 15 days paid time off

- 401(k) plan to help save for your future

- 18 weeks of paid parental leave. Biological, adoptive, and foster parents are all eligible

- Pre-tax commuter benefits

- Lyft Pink - Lyft team members get an exclusive opportunity to test new benefits of our Ridership Program

- Family building benefits
- Lyft Pink - Lyft team members get an exclusive opportunity to test new benefits of our Ridership Program

📌 Data Scientist (Toronto)
🏢 Lyft
📍 Toronto