Data Scientist; Search

Requirements

• 5+ years of relevant Data Science experience
• Direct experience working on a Search, recommendations, or information retrieval product — familiarity with the core problems (query understanding, retrieval, ranking, relevance evaluation) and the metrics used to measure them
• Innate curiosity around finding meaningful insights that inform how we think about and develop our product and business strategies
• Working knowledge of ML models and — more importantly — the judgment to apply them to real business problems and to devise the right metrics for evaluating algorithms and ranking systems
• Strong working knowledge of experimentation, including designing and analyzing complex product A/B testing results, with fluency in handling interaction effects and long-term metric movement
• Expert knowledge of SQL and Python, including common scientific computing packages and data science tools such as numpy, pandas, and scikit-learn
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to synthesize, simplify, and explain complex problems to different types of audiences, including executives, and compile compelling narratives
• (Desirable) Experience working with ranking algorithms for unstructured content
• (Desirable) Experience designing, deploying, or monitoring ML production models
• (Desirable) Basic understanding of how to build RAG systems

• As a Senior Data Scientist on the Search team, you will shape how neighbors find the people, places, posts, and businesses that matter to them
• You will own the data science behind query understanding, content retrieval, ranking, and the end-to-end search experience — partnering closely with ML, Engineering, PM, and Design to turn intent into outcomes
• Search sits at the intersection of nearly every product surface at Nextdoor: it powers neighbor-to-neighbor discovery, connects neighbors to trusted local businesses (a core part of our marketplace and SMB strategy), and increasingly relies on LLM-driven query understanding and semantic retrieval to handle the long, conversational queries our neighbors actually ask
• We are looking for an entrepreneurial, technically strong data scientist to accelerate this work and help define what "great search" means at Nextdoor
• This is an analyst + builder role
• We are looking for someone who is equally comfortable digging into messy data to find the insight that reframes a problem and rolling up their sleeves to prototype, ship, and iterate on the solution alongside engineering
• You should be energized by both halves of that loop — neither a pure analyst who hands off recommendations nor a pure modeler who skips the "why" — and willing to work end-to-end from question to production impact
• Successful candidates will exhibit deep technical acumen, strong product sense, and business savvy, with a passion for shipping
• You are excited to go deep on ranking and recommendation systems, semantic retrieval, and the application of LLMs to query understanding and evaluation
• Design and develop algorithms and models to optimize Search relevance, retrieval, and ranking — driving value for both neighbors and the businesses they discover
• Experiment design: ensure we run experiments efficiently and accurately, including monitoring early feature development through post-release follow-ups
• Develop and share key strategic insights through data analysis, including designing experiments and evaluating the performance and impact of data-driven content and ranking changes
• Build scalable metrics and dashboards to track Search performance and inform decisions across query understanding, retrieval, ranking, and downstream engagement
• Partner with cross-functional teams to support product development efforts (including product, design, engineering, marketing, and operations)
• Care deeply about data quality and empower employees to leverage data to help them succeed in their careers and help Nextdoor grow