Staff Data Scientist, SEO & AEO

Headway•New York, NY

About The Position

Headway is hiring a senior individual-contributor Data Scientist to support Patient Growth and help the company become a trusted place to research and find mental health care through search engines and AI assistants. The role focuses on driving new patients through SEO, AI answer engine optimization (AEO), and related surfaces, including the homepage, directory pages, provider profiles, and earned media. Reporting to a Data Science manager, this person will work closely with product, growth marketing, engineering, content, and design. They will lead measurement and testing strategy, combine internal and external data into a reliable source of truth, evaluate growth initiatives, and explain what is driving changes in traffic and patient acquisition. The role also involves automating analysis with AI agents and workflows, feeding findings into content decisions, and establishing measurement standards for organic growth across the team and its partners.

Requirements

10 or more years of experience using data science and analytics to drive decisions, with a strong growth background.
Experience working in a fast-changing environment without an established playbook.
Growth mindset, bias toward execution, ability to set priorities, and ability to move quickly on important problems.
First-principles thinking and understanding of the limitations and biases of different data sources.
Strong causal-inference judgment in messy settings.
Product mindset, including the ability to weigh business trade-offs and bring forward new ideas.
Knowledge of causal inference and quasi-experiments, with the ability to balance rigor against speed and cost and make decisions without a perfect test.
Strong SQL and Python skills.
Comfort pulling data from APIs, modeling in dbt, and building workflows.
Experience building agents or automated analysis workflows and using an AI coding tool such as Claude Code or Codex regularly.
Ability to assess AI output quality and use AI to reduce busywork.
Clear communication skills, including explaining complex measurement problems and the limits of data to nontechnical partners and executives.

Nice To Haves

Experience with SEO or AEO at a company where organic growth was a major channel.
Experience with marketplaces or two-sided growth, balancing and matching supply and demand.
Experience measuring acquisition quality beyond the first conversion, including retention, engagement, and lifetime value.
Experience owning or rebuilding a marketing attribution model.
Experience with search console data and SEO and AEO visibility tools.
Experience with earned media, affiliate, or community channels and their effects on search and AI visibility.

Responsibilities

Lead the strategy and execution of measurement and testing for organic growth.
Combine internal data, such as Google Search Console, clickstream data, and bookings, with external sources, such as Ahrefs and agency partners, to create a single source of truth.
Design matched-market and A/B tests.
Answer key business and product questions, including evaluating growth bets, identifying ineffective work, understanding AI answer citations, and determining what drives traffic or patient changes.
Build AI agents and workflows to automate analysis and identify what is working, what changed, and what to do next.
Feed analysis results back into decisions about content selection and writing.
Set standards for measuring organic growth and help partners and agencies distinguish meaningful signals from noise.