Staff Economist, Marketplace Experimentation

We are seeking an experienced Economist to transform how we measure value across Bolt's critical two-sided marketplaces, tackling complex challenges like network effects to optimize pricing, matching, and commissions. You will fully own marketplace experimentation, ensuring healthy test design, and driving R&D to develop novel methods for aligning objectives and measuring long-term impact.

Locations: Tallinn, Estonia | Berlin, Germany

About the role

You will fully own and transform our approach to measuring the impact of the marketplaces teams.

Marketplace experimentation is uniquely challenging because customer interactions cause network effects, which break traditional A/B testing assumptions. While we currently use the switchback test design, it presents limitations like lower statistical power, spillover effects, and a restricted focus on short-term results.

Your work will impact critical business decisions across the company, such as adapting ride prices to balance supply and demand, efficiently matching riders and drivers, and setting attractive delivery commissions.

Main tasks and responsibilities

• Collaborate with marketplace teams across the company to optimize sensitivity and speed of their switchback tests
• Provide standardized guidance to teams on network effects and how to select the right measurement methods.
• Drive R&D to deepen our understanding of marketplace dynamics and implement new methods to measure long-term impact
• Deliver proof-of-concepts clear enough for engineers to platformise and scale company-wide

About you:

• A strong background (PhD or equivalent experience) in the application of econometric or statistical theory to business or policy decisions
• Work well in highly collaborative environments to understand the context-specific challenges of teams and work with them to find and develop solutions
• Proven experience in applying causal inference methods to real product or policy decisions, with at least a theoretical understanding of two-sided marketplaces
• Comfort reading and implementing methods from research papers: you can go from a paper's mathematical notation to a working Python proof-of-concept
• Self-direction to define your own roadmap and drive it – you will have strong support and context along the way
• Experience with data science at scale using big data tools like Spark/Databricks
• Experience is great, but what we really look for is drive, intelligence, and integrity. So even if you don’t tick every box, please consider applying!

What you'll do / Team

Apply your econometrics/causal inference expertise to marketplace experimentation work, collaborating with marketplace teams to optimize test design and measurement of long-term impact.