Applied Science Manager

Clipboard•San Francisco, CA

1d•Remote

About The Position

Clipboard's mission is to uplift communities by connecting healthcare professionals with workplaces needing workers through an app-based marketplace. Founded in 2016, Clipboard is a remote-first company of over 1,000 people, a top Y-Combinator company, and profitable since 2022. As a leader in Long-Term Care staffing, Clipboard is expanding into Home Health, Hospitals, and more, and is growing its team to support millions more people and their communities. The Applied Science Manager will build and lead Clipboard's Applied Science function, owning the roadmap and vision for science across the marketplace. This role involves leading a small team of Applied Scientists and growing the function. The team is responsible for the quantitative infrastructure of the marketplace, including pricing algorithms, auction mechanisms, causal models, metric definitions, and experiment frameworks. Some of this work will be productized, while other parts will serve as the analytical foundation for all teams within the company. The manager will define key metrics, measurement methodologies, and marketplace performance reporting. Teams across product and engineering will leverage the models, experiments, and insights generated by this team. This position operates at the intersection of engineering, product, finance, and operations. The manager will prioritize the team's workload, balancing production work with analysis for other teams, determining the appropriate level of analytical rigor for different questions, and ensuring that projects deliver sufficient expected value. Priorities will shift, and the manager will maintain team focus on high-impact tasks. Additionally, the manager will be responsible for hiring and developing the Applied Science team. This is a player-coach role, requiring mentorship of Applied Scientists at various levels while also contributing to important individual contributor tasks. The team utilizes tools such as causal inference, machine learning, randomized experiments, discrete-time hazard models, auction/mechanism design, and time series analysis. The manager will collaborate with engineers to deploy models from prototype to production and communicate findings to product managers, operators, and leadership.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in economics, statistics, engineering, mathematics, or another quantitative field, or equivalent practical experience.
Experience building and deploying quantitative models in applied or research settings.
Fluency querying data directly with SQL or an equivalent tool.
Experience designing and analyzing controlled experiments.
1-3 years of experience managing or leading a team.

Nice To Haves

PhD/Masters in economics, operations research, statistics, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent quantitative depth from research or trading.
Track record of taking prediction models from idea to production.
Strong grounding in experimental design and causal inference.
Experience in quantitative finance, economic consulting, marketplaces, or another data-intensive environment where decisions have real business consequences.

Responsibilities

Build and lead Clipboard's Applied Science function.
Own the roadmap and vision for science across the marketplace.
Lead a small team of Applied Scientists and grow the function.
Own the quantitative infrastructure underneath the marketplace: pricing algorithms, auction mechanisms, causal models, metric definitions, and experiment frameworks.
Set the bar for the function: defining key metrics, how they are measured, and how marketplace performance is reported.
Decide what the team works on, in what order, and what success looks like.
Balance production work with analysis other teams depend on.
Determine when a question requires careful causal identification versus a quick directional answer.
Push back when the expected value isn't there.
Keep the team focused on the highest-impact work.
Hire and develop the Applied Science team.
Mentor Applied Scientists across levels.
Take on important IC problems yourself.
Work directly with engineers to take models from prototype to production.
Communicate reasoning clearly to PMs, operators, and leadership.