Senior Economist (Data Scientist), Marketplace Strategy

Company Description

Life at Grab
At Grab, every Grabber is guided by The Grab Way, which spells out our mission, how we believe we can achieve it, and our operating principles - the 4Hs: Heart, Hunger, Honour and Humility. These principles guide and help us make decisions as we work to create economic empowerment for the people of Southeast Asia.

Job Description

Get to know the team
How do we ensure customers get their Food on time, even when it rains?

What determines the right price for a JustGrab ride? 

How can we reduce driver partners' wait times at restaurants?

Why do some driver partners in Jakarta prefer to take GrabBike jobs rather than GrabExpress jobs?

The Regional Marketplace Strategy team takes on a set of diverse and challenging questions in the mobility, logistics and economics space within Grab. We focus on balancing Grab’s multi-sided marketplace across our ecosystem of driver partners, customers, merchant partners, and agents. Our work sees us optimise experiences for our customers, contributes to providing growing income opportunities for our driver partners and merchants, and drives growth, efficiency and profitability for Grab overall. 

We work with tech teams and operations teams across all of our 8 markets in Southeast Asia. Our core work covers pricing, fulfillment experience, driver retention & incentives and customer retention - but our scope frequently expands to tackle issues beyond these topics.

Get to know the role
In this role you will be working closely with Grab product teams, other regional teams based in Singapore, and country operations teams on the ground.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Acting as Business Unit Strategy for some of Grab’s products - Shaping the direction of our tech roadmap through data-driven insights combined with a deep understanding of the marketplace and a hyper-local understanding of our markets
• Making yourself the regional expert on a set of product features and how they interact with the wider ecosystem. You will be providing guidance on the wider marketplace effects of our product decisions and making actionable recommendations to balance the tradeoffs in our marketplace
• Supporting product teams in launching new features in the market and optimising existing features through experimentation, causal inferencing or other suitable analytical methods
• Providing strategic advice & thought leadership on business-critical issues through rigorous analysis paired with structured, big picture thinking

The day to day activities
The day to day will see you working on varied tasks and projects, a selection of projects could include:

• Working with product managers and product analysts to impact-size and prioritise product feature lists for our next development sprints
• Running data-driven research to uncover new insights to inform product strategy, operational initiatives or changes in existing product configurations
• Conducting independent analysis of marketplace issues identified in a specific market; delivering insights & recommendations to our ops teams to balance such issues
• Sharing a recent piece of analysis or details of a new product with the rest of the team to provide coaching to help with similar projects
• Presenting a strategic opportunity assessment & analysis to leadership
• Writing a playbook to be used by operations teams which provides a mental model and documentation to tackle common marketplace situations supported by qualitative and/or quantitative insights
• Working with local teams to plan and design experiments for demand, supply and market clearance levers (e.g. via changes in pricing, driver incentives, driver dispatch logic)

Qualifications

The must haves

• At least 2 years of relevant work experience (for example in Analytics, Business Intelligence, Government, Management Consulting, or strategy roles in a tech company)
• Strong analytical knowledge - Prior experience in handling large, complex, high velocity data; familiar with common statistical, analytical and ML techniques; willing to continue to learn/apply new techniques as required.
• Strong understanding of causal inference - Able to design and recommend the most suitable ways for obtaining causal effects, be it through A/B tests or inference from quasi-experimental set-ups
• Strong presentation skills - Ability to distill insights & articulate an actionable point of view to non-technical audiences; Comfortable presenting to senior stakeholders; Good command of storytelling and presentation techniques (e.g. slide making, data visualisation)
• Convincing meeting presence and strong stakeholder management / influencing skills - Ability to get buy-in and drive decisions within the space of a meeting
• Problem solving & can do attitude - willing to learn quickly and understand the root cause of problems; able to work with a multidisciplinary team to propose creative solutions
• Ability to handle multiple priorities and solve ambiguous problems that may evolve in scope or complexity
• Good understanding of SQL and R/Python to work with data, including common packages/libraries
• Willing to travel (subject to travel guidance by Grab)

Good to have

• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Economics, Finance, Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, Computer Science, Data Science or related fields.
• Interest and experience in real-world applications of data science and data analytics - such as NLP, ML, Network analysis, spatial, econometrics or time-series analysis.
• Prior experience in training data science models using common machine learning libraries.
• Prior experience in Product Management.
• Prior experience in an operations role in a ‘direct-to-consumer’, online business or startup

Additional Information

Embrace a World of Possibilities

At Grab, we foster a culture that values your individuality and promotes career and personal growth. Our benefits go above and beyond the usual, like a competitive salary, work-life balance, and mobility opportunities.

Immerse yourself in a diverse and inclusive environment where belonging is not just a word, but a shared experience. Be at the center of the intersection of innovation and impact and surround yourself with people that are equally ambitious and want to get that elusive work/life integration right.

When you join Grab, you are on the journey with us, and you’ll see where your contributions matter, and our collective success becomes your legacy.