Staff Data Scientist

New York, New York, United States; San Francisco, California, United States; Seattle, Washington, United States Headway’s mission is a big one – to build a new mental health care system everyone can access. We’ve built technology that helps people find great therapists with the first software-enabled national network of providers accepting insurance. 1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but the majority of providers don’t accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway is building a new mental healthcare system that everyone can access by making it easy for therapists to accept insurance and scale their practice. Headway was founded in 2019. Since then, we’ve grown into a diverse, national network of over 60,000 mental healthcare providers across all 50 states who run their practice on our software and have served over 1 million patients. We’re a Series D company with over $325m in funding from a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Accel, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Spark Capital, Thrive Capital, Forerunner Ventures and Health Care Service Corporation. We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career. Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better. About the role Join us to build the decision engine for better mental health outcomes. As a Staff Data Scientist , you will be a senior technical and strategic leader for how Headway measures, learns, and improves. You will own the hardest and most ambiguous product questions, shape how we define success, and drive decisions that cut across multiple teams and product surfaces. You will not only run the analyses, you will influence what we build, how we evaluate it, and how we scale what works. This role is for someone who can zoom in to debug a metric definition and zoom out to design a measurement strategy for a major product area, then bring the organization along with them. What you will do Be the analytics partner inside the pod. Work closely with Product, Engineering, Design, Ops, and Clinical stakeholders to define the questions, the metrics, the guardrails, and the decision rules. Run rigorous experiments. Design and analyze A/B tests and quasi-experiments with clear hypotheses, power considerations, and pre-defined success criteria. Connect behavior to strategy. Use funnel, cohort, segmentation, and lifecycle analysis to understand how people and providers experience Headway, and where product changes will have the biggest impact. Use causal inference when experiments are not possible. Apply approaches like diff‑in‑diff, matching, and regression‑based designs with principled uncertainty quantification. Build models when they should exist. Develop predictive models that operationalize vetted insights (feature development, validation, backtesting, calibration), with clear launch criteria and monitoring plans. Create decision‑ready work. Produce analysis and narratives that are crisp, honest about uncertainty, and drive action. Help raise the bar. Contribute to shared standards for metrics, experimentation, and analytical quality, so teams can move faster with confidence. Own a product measurement strategy. Define north star and input metrics for a major product area (or multiple surfaces), align stakeholders on definitions, and build conviction in what “good” looks like. Lead multi‑team initiatives. Drive cross‑functional work where the right answer is not obvious and the path is not linear, and ensure we land measurable outcomes. Set the experimentation standard. Establish frameworks for test design, guardrails, decision rules, and interpretation that improve both speed and rigor across teams. Develop evaluation systems for complex products. For areas like matching, ranking, or applied AI experiences, build measurement approaches that combine offline evaluation, online experiments, and human‑quality signals when needed. Build scalable analytical assets. Invest in durable measurement systems: semantic definitions, self‑serve dashboards, monitoring and alerts, and repeatable templates that reduce ad hoc work. Mentor and uplevel. Coach other data scientists and analytics partners, provide strong technical review, and model what great looks like. Be a thought leader. Proactively identify opportunities, shape roadmaps with an evidence‑based POV, and create clarity where teams feel stuck. What will make you successful 10+ years using data to drive product or business decisions in product, growth, engineering, or operations environments (or equivalent depth of experience and scope). Expert fluency in SQL and strong proficiency in Python or R , including building reliable, reusable analysis workflows. Deep expertise in Bayesian experimentation, causal inference, and measurement design , including common failure modes and how to prevent them. Strong applied modeling judgment: you know when a model is the right tool, and you can build, validate, and launch responsibly. A track record of leading ambiguous, cross‑team work and delivering measurable outcomes (not just insights). Excellent executive communication and influence: you earn trust, align stakeholders, and move decisions forward. Strong product sense and an instinct for decision leverage: you focus on what changes outcomes, not what is merely interesting. Motivation for our mission: improving access and affordability in mental healthcare. The expected base pay range for this position is $215,900 - $254,000, based on a variety of factors including qualifications, experience, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for performance‑based variable compensation and an equity grant, depending on the position and level. We are committed to offering a comprehensive and competitive total rewards package, including robust health and wellness benefits, retirement savings, and meaningful ownership opportunities through equity. Compensation decisions are made holistically, ensuring fairness and alignment with market benchmarks while recognizing individual contributions and potential. Benefits offered include: Equity compensation Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage HSA / FSA 401K Work‑from‑Home Stipend Therapy Reimbursement 16‑week parental leave for eligible employees Carrot Fertility annual reimbursement and membership 13 paid holidays each year as well as a Holiday Break during the week between December 25th and December 31st Flexible PTO Employee Assistance Program (EAP) Training and professional development We believe a team's strength is in its people, and we cannot achieve this mission without a team that reflects the diversity of this problem – across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, national origin, religion, family status, disability, military status, and experience. Headway is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Headway will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please inform the recruiter when they contact you to schedule your interview. Headway participates in E-Verify. Headway Custom Demographic Questions We believe that to build the best startup team, we must build a diverse, equitable and inclusive team. We encourage people from all backgrounds to apply to all roles, and we proactively work to design hiring processes that mitigates bias. To help us track the parity in our candidate pipelines and efficacy of our recruiting efforts, please consider answering the following demographic questions. While completion of this survey is required, you will have the option to select “I don't wish to answer” for all questions. Your responses will be used in aggregate only to help us identify areas of improvement in our process. Your responses will not be linked to your specific application and will not in any way be used in the hiring decision. #J-18808-Ljbffr