Spark Foundry is a global media agency that exists to bring HEAT – Higher Engagement, Affinity, and Transactions – to brands. By combining flawless media fundamentals with aggressive innovation, Spark inspires consumers to pay more attention; to care more about our clients’ brands; and to buy more products and services from them.

Balancing the nimble spirit of a startup with the powerhouse soul of Publicis Media, Spark Foundry delivers the best of both worlds to a client roster that spans some of the world’s best and most beloved brands and companies. We combine boutique-caliber insights and service with the buying clout and first-look access of a global leader, bringing the heat to challenger brands that want to act like giants, and to giant brands that want to act like challengers.

With a Millennial-friendly, bottom-up culture that celebrates diversity and aims for all voices to be heard, Spark has become a magnet for the industry’s best talent, with one of the best retention rates in the industry. And by applying a whole-person approach to professional and personal development, Spark develops a workforce that is well prepared for today’s challenges, and also poised to create meaningful careers in the years to come. 

Because we know that heat arises the intersection of complementary forces, our professionals come from myriad disciplines and backgrounds: data, analytics, and insights; content and creative production; communications and strategy; finance and marketing; and sociology, psychology, and other liberal arts disciplines.

We're looking for an  Associate Director who:

• Can help evolve the Data Sciences/Advanced Analytics/Modeling capability within the practice
• Can help provide strategic thought leadership and subject matter expertise on Advanced Analytics/Modeling techniques to enhance our capabilities and bring new opportunities, approaches, ideas, perspectives, etc. to key clients.
• Has a combination of deep and sophisticated advanced analytical/modeling expertise; business acumen; a strategic and technical mindset; and client, relationship and project management proficiency, together with a passion for building new capabilities and teams
• Can structure ambiguous problems, own and drive projects from start to finish, apply sound business judgment, and communicate complex information effectively
• Has a genuine curious nature, desire to dive deep in the numbers to discover context and make the business case, and goes beyond usual approaches to solve problems and seize opportunities
• Has the willingness to “have an opinion” backed up by insight and analytics and the confidence to influence key stakeholders in meetings 

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Leverage advanced analytic techniques to drive marketing performance (ex. site traffic, application volume, conversion rates, CPA, revenue, ROAS, LTV, etc.), isolate key KPI trends and performance pacing, optimize consumer online/offline experiences, predict consumer behaviors, maximize sales conversion, drive optimizations (across media investment and mix, target audiences, and creative messages) and forecast critical business outcomes
• Work with complex data structures; cleanse data and perform statistical analyses such as: marketing mix modes (MMM), digital multi-touch attribution (MTA), TV attribution, media response analysis, time series analysis, predictive modeling, cluster analysis, user overlap analysis, path to conversion analysis, website analytics, lifetime value (LV) analysis, discrete choice/conjoint analysis, latent class & other clustering techniques (segmentations), multivariate & logistic regressions (ex. multivariate creative analysis), decision trees (e.g. CHAID/CART), factor & correspondence/MDS analysis, simulation & optimization, forecasting, etc.
• Measure and optimize full-funnel, performance marketing initiatives (across paid search and dislay) to ensure activities are effective, efficient, and deliver a high return on investment (ROI).
• Lead advanced analytics engagements from start-to-finish, including:
• Stakeholder interviews/fact-finding to uncover client issues
• Propose solution /analytical approach / methodology, with supporting rationale
• Manage project timeline throughout, escalating potential roadblocks when necessary
• Conduct modeling and analyses
• Generate insights
• Formulate strategic implications and recommendations
• Produce easy-to-understand, error-free, and timely reports
• Deliver final presentation of results 
• Effectively work across the advanced analytics/modeling lifecycle:
• Definition of business questions and hypotheses 
• Data acquisition from different sources (ensuring adequacy, accuracy and legitimacy of data)
• Data integration (merge, join, subset)
• Data preparation and cleanup (missing data, outlier detection, duplications)
• Model development
• Conduct descriptive statistical and diagnostic techniques to determine model validity, accuracy and goodness-of-fit, such as: p-values, MAPE, Variance Inflation factor (VIF), Durbin-Watson, etc.
• Exploratory data analysis
• Creating and optimizing modes including validation and interpretation
• Data visualization (Excel, Tableau, R Shiny etc.)
• Insights generation
• Communication of results in a clear and succinct fashion
• Self-sufficiently manage reporting responsibilities and analytical projects with guidance from senior team members
• Independently deliver results and presentations to internal stakeholders and clients
• The quality, accuracy, and timeliness of work being done on behalf of our clients
• Produce easy-to-understand, error-free, and timely deliverables that provide actionable insights that address client business objectives
• Clearly define and manage project deliverables, timelines, and dependencies for junior team members, internal stakeholders, and clients
• Support the development of measurement strategies, learning agendas, and roadmaps with input from senior team members and internal stakeholders
• Provide training, project support, and career advice to junior team members
• Connect the dots, glean insights, find the story, and articulate meaning to: 
• Address key business questions (‘the whats’)
• Identify insights and provide context & hypotheses (the ‘so-whats and why’)
• Recommend strategic action (the ‘now-whats and what nexts’)
• Devise and implement efficient and secure procedures for data handling and analysis
• Help provide strategic thought leadership and subject matter expertise on advanced analytical techniques to enhance our capabilities, drive competitive advantage and bring new opportunities, approaches, ideas, perspectives, etc. to clients
• Help establish and instill standards, methods and best practices that enable the Marketing Sciences practice to consistently provide best-in-class analytical deliverables
• Provide the media strategy and execution teams with actionable insights to optimize the effectiveness and efficiency of media tactics and campaigns both across and within media channels
• Deep dive analytics and statistical/machine learning modeling for precision audience targeting, paid search keyword and bidding optimization, display bidding optimization, etc.
• Design of experiments to optimize media (budget, mix, audiences, messaging)

TECHNICAL SKILLS
Must Have:

• Hands-on experience working with various advanced statistical modeling (Bayesian Networks Inference, linear and non-linear regression, hierarchical mixed models/multi-level) and other forms of quantitative analysis (media response modeling, forecasting, time series analysis, multivariate statistical analysis, factor analysis, regression analysis, propensity, etc.)
• Knowledge of database structure and functionality
• Hands-on experience with data manipulation and statistical / analytical software packages (R, MATLAB, SPlus, Stata, SAS, SPSS, SQL) and coding / programming languages (SQL, Python, JAVA, C++) 
• Experience with AWS, Hadoop, Spark, Redshift or other big data platforms
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office, particularly Excel (have the ability to sort, analyze, import, export, clean data, work with pivot tables, and know how to do V and H lookups, etc.)
• ETL Process (Must have done this repeatedly throughout the career and must be able to self-diagnose the data for error).
• Have ran regressions in projects and understand regressions thoroughly
• P-value, VIF, T-score, R2, MSE, Durbin-Watson should all be familiar terms
• Forecasting methodologies (ARIMA, fbProphet, etc)
• Must be able to calculate significant tests in various setups such comparison of means, proportions, and finding minimum # of sample size
• Correlation, Cluster Analysis, and Factor Analysis

Nice to Have:

• Experience working with marketing mix modeling (MMM), (digital; TV, radio, OOH, etc.) attribution and measurement companies: including Neustar, MMA (IPSOS), Analytic Partners, Nielsen (mROI; Visual IQ), (m)PHASIZE (Publicis Media), Hudson River Group (HRG), Marketing Evolution, Google Attribution 360, Abakus (SAP), Conversion Logic, TVSquared, iSpot, C3 Metrics, Data Plus Math, IRI, etc.
• Business Intelligence (BI) / Visualization tool experience (Datorama, Domo, Tableau, Microstrategy, Microsoft Power BI)
• Hands-on experiences working with aggregate, cookie, user, and event level datasets
• Experience working with ad/mar technologies like:
• Ad Servers (Google/Doubleclick, Innovid, Sizmek, Flashtalking, etc.)
• Programmatic Media & Exchanges (OpenRTB, Direct, PMP’s, DSPs, DMPs, SSPs, etc.)
• Marketing Clouds (Adobe, Salesforce, Oracle, SAP Hybris, IBM, etc.)
• Digital & Broadcast Analytics (Google, Adobe, Mixpanel, comScore, Quantcast, Nielsen, etc.)
• Web Analytics (Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, etc.)
• Experience working with location-based intelligence companies: PlaceIQ, Placed, NinthDecimal, Cubeiq, Four Square, AdTruth, etc.
• Web analytics platforms (Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics, etc.)
• Surveys (Lucid, Millward Brown, Nielsen, etc.)
• Competitive monitoring tools (Nielsen, comScore, Kantar, Pathmatics, Competitrac, Numerator, etc.)

• Bachelor’s degree, MBA or Master’s degree in quantitative studies.  The equivalent combination of education, training and work experience may be suitable
• 5-7 years of work experience in a quantitative business environment
• Minimum 4 years of working with R or Python (Must have worked and created codes from scratch on several projects – not merely running someone else’s code by changing some parameters)
• Minimum 2 years of SQL (Must have worked and created codes from scratch on several projects – not merely running someone else’s code by changing some parameters)
• Minimum 3+ years of experience in strategic marketing/media analytics (online & offline; traditional, digital and cross-media)
• Minimum of 2+ years of agency experience (agency experience/ client service business required) or in a management-consulting firm
• Minimum 2+ years of team management (with direct reports)
   

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

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