Lead Data Scientist, Newsroom Analytics

The Wall Street Journal • New York, NY

5d • $135,000 - $155,000 • Onsite

About The Position

The Wall Street Journal is seeking a Lead Data Scientist, Newsroom Analytics, to drive its newsroom audience-data strategy. Based in the New York office, this highly autonomous, strategic role works directly with newsroom coverage, audience, digital strategy, and product teams on decisions about how news is reported, prioritized, and delivered. The position reports to the Senior Manager, Newsroom Data.

The role owns the full analytical lifecycle, from identifying important problems and designing solutions to developing metrics, models, and forecasts and driving their adoption. It requires translating complex methods into clear recommendations and connecting analytical work to how readers discover, engage with, and return to WSJ journalism. The Lead Data Scientist also serves as a technical anchor for the team by mentoring colleagues, establishing standards for analytical rigor, and improving team workflows.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of experience in data science, analytics, or applied machine learning.
• Ability to own models end-to-end in a lean team, including scheduling, maintaining, and iterating on outputs with orchestration tools such as Airflow.
• Strong proficiency in Python, including feature engineering, model training, validation, and interpretation.
• Experience maintaining production-quality, reproducible code in Git.
• Advanced SQL skills and hands-on experience with large-scale data warehouses such as Snowflake or BigQuery.
• Experience with ETL workflows or analytics engineering frameworks such as dbt.
• Experience applying causal inference and statistical methods to measure real-world outcomes from observational data.
• Strong communication skills, including presenting quantitative findings as clear business or editorial recommendations to senior non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to influence decisions without direct authority.
• Experience building models that influence content strategy, audience development, or consumer retention.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in a media, publishing, or subscription-based environment.
• Experience with NLP or text analysis methods, including topic modeling, classification, or entity extraction applied to content data.
• Familiarity with off-platform attribution and audience measurement, including modeling relationships between distributed content, platform referrals, and downstream subscription or engagement outcomes.
• Experience using AI to democratize data and enable faster time-to-insight.

Responsibilities

• Partner with digital strategy, coverage, and product teams to identify high-impact analytical opportunities, define questions, and shape the data science roadmap.
• Design and build predictive and explanatory models end-to-end, including feature engineering, validation, and production deployment, balancing complexity with interpretability.
• Translate quantitative findings into actionable recommendations for senior newsroom and business stakeholders and partner with cross-functional teams to support adoption.
• Own the core metrics and measurement systems newsroom teams use to evaluate performance and make editorial decisions; ensure they are accurate, documented, and trusted.
• Measure editorial and audience impact using rigorous statistical methods, including causal inference, observational methods, and controlled experimentation.
• Mentor and develop junior data team members, set standards for rigorous, production-ready analysis, and build the team's technical capability.

Benefits

• Comprehensive and competitive benefits package covering health, retirement, and wellbeing.
• Optional benefits to meet employees' diverse needs.
• Bonus targets for bonus-eligible roles are determined using multiple considerations, including market benchmarks and individual contributions.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed