Audience Data Scientist

Job Description

Job Description

Audience Data Scientist (Marketing Activation)

We are hiring an Audience Data Scientist to identify high-value customer and prospect opportunities and translate them into analytically defined audiences for email and advertising activation.

Classmates is entering a new phase of growth and focus as we invest more deeply in first-party data, lifecycle marketing, and efficient activation. This role closes the loop between insight and execution — ensuring our best ideas are not only discovered, but accurately activated, measured, and improved over time.

This role sits at the intersection of marketing data science and audience operations . You will analyze large behavioral and lifecycle datasets to define high-value audience strategies, determine the data required for activation, and build SQL-driven audiences in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. You will monitor performance and iterate to improve conversion efficiency over time.

This role primarily focuses on audience strategy and activation. Over time, you may take increasing ownership of Salesforce Marketing Cloud audience configuration and the reliability of audience-specific data flows, partnering closely with data engineering where needed.

Responsibilities Identify audience opportunities through data science

• Translate business goals (e.g., re-engagement, conversion lift, efficiency gains) into clear, testable audience hypotheses
• Analyze large-scale behavioral, transactional, and lifecycle data in Snowflake and GA4 to identify high-value audience opportunities
• Develop audience strategies grounded in intent signals, engagement patterns, and lifecycle dynamics
• Define the activation-ready data fields required to support those strategies

Build and activate audiences in Salesforce Marketing Cloud

• Translate analytically defined audience logic into SQL-driven Data Extensions in Salesforce Marketing Cloud
• Own audience QA and validation, including eligibility logic, counts, suppression rules, and refresh cadence
• Own the ongoing integrity and reliability of audience-specific data flows within Salesforce Marketing Cloud
• Identify opportunities to automate refresh, QA, and segmentation workflows
• Contribute to improvements in audience data pipeline design in partnership with data engineering
• Partner with lifecycle marketers and channel owners to support accurate execution

Monitor performance and drive optimization

• Monitor audience-level performance across email and advertising channels
• Analyze results against hypotheses to understand conversion impact and efficiency
• Support experimentation approaches such as holdouts, audience splits, and incremental testing
• Iterate on audience definitions and logic based on performance feedback

Partner across systems and teams

• Work with data engineering to inform activation-ready schemas and field availability (without owning pipelines)
• Collaborate with marketing, analytics, and engineering partners to ensure data consistency and integrity across systems
• Identify data quality issues, drift, or mismatches and elevate them early

Desired Skills and Experience 

• 5+ years of experience in data science, marketing analytics, or related analytical roles
• Bachelor’s degree in a quantitative discipline emphasizing statistics, modeling, or data analysis (e.g., Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Economics, Engineering), or equivalent practical experience
• Strong SQL skills (Snowflake experience preferred) and ability to adapt queries for activation environments
• Strong experience using Python for analysis, automation, or modeling
• Experience working with large behavioral datasets (GA4 or similar event-based data)
• Strong analytical and experimental design skills, including experience evaluating incremental impact and audience-level performance
• Familiarity with statistical modeling or machine learning approaches applied to customer behavior or audience optimization
• Demonstrated ability to independently own analytical initiatives from problem definition through activation, translating insights into executable audience strategies
• Systems thinking and strong judgment around data accuracy and downstream impact
• Clear communication skills across technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Experience supporting lifecycle marketing, CRM, or audience-based activation programs
• Hands-on experience with Salesforce Marketing Cloud audience-building workflows (e.g., SQL Data Extensions, Automation Studio, Contact Builder)
• Experience applying statistical or machine-learning techniques to audience measurement or optimization
• Familiarity with identity resolution and user-level stitching (email, user_id, device_id)
• Exposure to cross-platform audience measurement (web, iOS, Android)
• Exposure to ELT tooling (dbt, Airflow, Fivetran) and interest in owning audience-specific data workflows
• Experience with data quality monitoring, validation frameworks, or alerting
• Experience building BI visualizations in tools such as Tableau, Power BI, or Sigma

Classmates

Classmates is the premier online, social, and mobile destination for reconnecting with the people from your high school years. Classmates offers the largest digitized collection of high school yearbooks online, with over 450,000 available to view, tag, sign, and share, and has the most comprehensive directory of high schools and class lists from the 1940s to today. 

Salary Range:

Min: $122,900
Mid: $137,600
Max: $153,000

The pay range reflects the salary amount the Company reasonably expects to pay for the position. It is not a guarantee of actual compensation or a specific payment amount to any candidate. The actual compensation will depend on numerous factors including, without limitation, a particular candidate’s experience and qualifications.

The Company's Applicant and Worker Privacy Notice can be found here.

PeopleConnect is an equal opportunity employer.

Local area candidates are encouraged to apply, and please note we are not able to offer visa sponsorship, visa transfer, or corp-corp arrangements.

Note for Principal Agencies - Principal agents should not forward resumes to PeopleConnect, as we will not be responsible for any fees arising from the use of resumes submitted from agencies without a prior written and signed agreement and authorized job order for this position in place.