Head of Data & ML

ABOUT POSH We are all social creatures, but the dominant “social” companies today have evolved into digital loneliness machines, driving isolation, anxiety, and mental health challenges around the world. Human connection is lost. Posh is a beacon guiding us back. Posh enables anyone to build an IRL community based on shared interests, while connecting consumers with the communities of people just like them. Founded by event organizers who were frustrated with the growing loneliness epidemic and the tools available to build their own event brand, we’ve built the ultimate platform for launching, monetizing, and finding IRL communities of people just like you. In just 6 years, Posh has grown to a team of 70, expanded to 10M+ users, secured $70m in venture funding, and facilitated over $400M in transactions. ABOUT THE ROLE As our Head of Data and ML, you will own the entire data function. You’ll be accountable for the technical excellence and vision of the team that builds event discovery for 1M MAUs, the experimentation and measurement that guide product investment, and the data platform the whole company relies on to make decisions. This is a rare opportunity to lead a unified data organization, providing clear direction and impact across the business. You’ll lead a talented multi-disciplinary team of 8 data scientists, machine learning engineers, and analytics/data engineers. Your job is to keep the team’s bar and vision sharp as Posh scales: choosing the right problems, making sound decisions, and shipping work that moves the product forward. Your day-to-day will involve: - Balancing team leadership with hands-on technical work as a true player-coach - Translating a product-oriented vision into a technical roadmap the team believes in - Working hands-on in analysis reviews, experiment critiques, model evaluations, and building prototypes yourself when it moves things forward - Mentoring senior ICs into leaders and helping mid-level ICs level up - Setting a culture of rigor, urgency, and craft across every discipline on the team This role is in-person 5 days a week at our SoHo, NYC headquarters. Relocation bonuses are available for out-of-state candidates. WHAT YOU'LL OWN - Be the technical translation layer: Turn the product vision into focused data and ML bets, and give the team the context to make good calls on their own. When product brings you an idea, you sharpen or debate it, say what’s possible, what it will cost, and what we’ll learn. When something isn’t possible yet, you can explain why and lay out the path to get there. Own the data narrative at All Hands, leadership reviews, and board updates. - Build Posh’s discovery and search systems: Advise the team as they build our ranking, recommendation, classification, and search algorithms, from problem framing and baselines to offline evaluation and online testing. Define the metrics that prove discovery is getting better every quarter. - Make experimentation a source of truth: Raise the rigor of experiment design, metric selection, and analysis. Bring causal inference to the questions A/B tests can’t answer cleanly, so product and engineering investment follows real evidence. Improve our understanding of ecosystem tradeoffs and marketplace dynamics. - Scale the data and ML foundation: improve our data infrastructure, with a focus on AI/ML readiness - from our warehouse to feature pipelines, observability, and evaluation tooling. Make sure every model and AI feature we ship is built on data we trust. Make build-vs-buy calls along the way. - Make Posh AI-native with data: rethink how data work gets done now that agents can write SQL and run analyses. Lead data and and cross-functional partners to build the semantic layer and AI-native tools on top of it (text-to-SQL, MCP, agentic analytics), so anyone at Posh can get a trustworthy answer on their own. Measure data adoption and close the gaps. - Raise the bar at every level: Set what great looks like across DS, ML, and DE. Give senior ICs room to lead, give mid-level ICs a clear path to their next level, and have hard conversations quickly and with care. WHO YOU ARE - You believe in the importance of real-world human connection and are passionate about our mission to help the world connect more meaningfully in real life. - You have 10+ years in data, including 3+ years managing DS, ML, and/or DE teams at a high-growth consumer or marketplace company. - You’re a former Staff-level IC who still works like one: senior ICs respect your technical judgment because you can add signal in model review, experiment readouts, and architecture discussions. - You’re deep in either causal inference or recommendation/ranking systems, and credible in the other. - You’re bullish on AI-native data development. You’ve already changed how you and your team works because of it, and you have a clear view of where data roles, tooling, and team shape are heading. - You’ve turned ambiguous product goals into technical roadmaps that shaped critical decisions. - You’d rather multiply a strong team than build a large one. IDEALLY: - You have built a semantic layer or AI evaluation frameworks in production. - You have entrepreneurial spirit and been part of a 0-1 founding team or a founder yourself. - You have worked closely with a founder or CEO who is deeply involved in product, taste, and pace. Posh provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training. Posh is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. Please let us know if you need assistance or accommodation due to a disability