Lead Economist, Pricing and Marketplace Design - New York - The Knot Worldwide

Description

Overview

WHAT WE DO MATTERS: At The Knot Worldwide, we champion celebration - and that starts with celebrating our people. Our employees are passionate dreamers, thoughtful doers, and lifelong learners who power meaningful moments for millions around the world. We're united by authentic connection, shared purpose, and a deep commitment to the global community we serve. Here, flexibility and belonging go hand in hand with high performance. Driven by our core values, we believe the best ideas come from empowered teams: those who consistently collaborate with intention to design solutions, spark ideas, and drive impact. Our people are at the heart of our success.

About the Role and the Team

The Knot Worldwide is seeking a Lead Machine Learning Scientist to architect the economic engine of our global wedding marketplace. In this role, you will move beyond traditional predictive analytics to build structural models of supply and demand, design incentive-compatible auction mechanisms, and simulate counterfactual market scenarios. You will work at the intersection of Microeconomics and Machine Learning to ensure that our pricing strategies optimize value for millions of couples and hundreds of thousands of vendors. As a strategic leader, you will partner with the VP of Monetization to translate complex economic insights into actionable business strategies.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Leadership: Partnering with the VP of monetization to translate complex economic insights into actionable business and pricing strategies.
• Structural Demand Modeling: Researching, developing, and maintaining hierarchical Bayesian models to estimate price elasticities across heterogeneous vendor segments and utilize these models to inform dynamic pricing and subscription tiering decisions.
• Auction Mechanism Design: Designing and optimizing the bidding algorithms for our vendor advertising platform and simulating auction formats to maximize revenue and ecosystem health.
• Marketplace Simulation: Building an "Auction Gym" (agent-based model) to stress-test pricing policies and understand complex feedback loops before production deployment.
• Causal Inference & Experimentation: Designing rigorous market-level experiments (Switchback, Synthetic Control) to measure the true incremental impact of pricing interventions.
• Vendor Supply Estimation: Using dynamic discrete choice models to estimate vendor opportunity costs and labor supply elasticity.

Qualifications

• A PhD in Economics (Industrial Organization), quantitative marketing, operations research, or computer science (algorithmic game theory).
• A minimum of 3+ years of experience in a two-sided marketplace or an economic consulting firm.
• Demonstrated experience and deep understanding of structural estimation, mechanism design, and causal machine learning.
• Experience in designing and implementing auction-based pricing models.
• Expert proficiency in Python or R; experience with causal inference libraries (EconML, CausalML) and optimization solvers.
• A collaborative attitude that fosters a culture of data-driven decision making across the organization.
• An innovative spirit that thrives on exploring new ideas and approaches to solve challenging problems.

Work Model

This role is -eligible and based near one of our office hubs. You'll be expected to work in the office two days a week as part of our hybrid work model.

What You Love About Us

• Commit to our customers: You act as one team on behalf of our customers. You lead with head and heart, and build what matters for life's most meaningful moments.
• Raise the bar: You define "great" and work backwards. You are unafraid to innovate, learn, and keep moving forward toward our shared vision.
• Be all in: You believe in our mission and take ownership of your work. You debate openly to reach the best outcomes, speaking with clarity and care, embracing diverse perspectives, then commit fully.
• Celebrate impact: You measure success by the outcomes you create. You hold yourself accountable to delivering value, while recognizing progress and the lessons learned along the way. You love to win, together.

What You Love About Us

We believe in a wide range of holistic offerings to support our employees so that they can live our values day in and day out. From mental wellbeing, physical health and financial planning, to engaging perks and discounts, we are in the business of celebrating and supporting the Moments that Matter, both in and out of the office. We offer flexible vacation, generous parental leave, and prioritize initiatives that support the growth, development, and happiness of our people.

is our approach to hybrid work. It's designed to support how we work best: combining the flexibility we value with meaningful opportunities to connect in person. Whether a role is -eligible or not, we believe in purposeful moments to come together, build strong relationships, and drive bold ideas forward.

• For -eligible roles, this includes regular in-office time to foster collaboration and connection.
• For roles not eligible for in-office expectations, we support connection through virtual collaboration and intentional gatherings.

To facilitate in-person collaboration, we have office spaces in Barcelona, Spain; Delhi, India; Galway, Ireland; London, England; New York, NY; and Washington, D.C.

US Notice: The Knot Worldwide provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability. In addition to federal law requirements, The Knot Worldwide complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. The Knot Worldwide expressly prohibits any form of workplace harassment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status.

Privacy Notice: The Knot Worldwide (TKWW) processes your personal data to evaluate your application, based on the legal ground of taking steps prior to entering into a potential employment contract. Only the data strictly necessary for this purpose is collected. In some cases, your data may also be processed based on TKWW's legitimate interests (e.g., to improve recruitment practices or manage candidate pools), to which you can object at any time. You have the right to access, rectify, or delete your data, and to object to certain uses. To learn more about your rights, please consult our Privacy Policy. If you wish to file a complaint, you may contact the competent data protection authority.