Ipsos is hiring: Data Scientist, Creative Excellence in Chicago

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Job Description

Within Ipsos, the Creative Excellence team helps clients understand what makes advertising effective across TV, digital, social and other media channels. A core strategic solution is Creative Spark AI, an AI-enabled capability to predict and explain ad performance at scale globally. Your primary focus will be to support the development and evolution of this solution and to create new products that leverage this framework.

What We Offer

• Work with cutting‑edge AI and data technologies in a production environment alongside other experienced data scientists and engineers.
• A culture that values curiosity, scientific rigor, collaboration, and continuous learning.
• Opportunities to grow into senior or specialized roles such lead data scientist, AI product specialist, or domain expert in creative analytics.

Role Summary

Contribute to the design and experimentation of AI models and features that power Creative Spark AI. Experiment to find alternative measurement and modelling best practices that may become independent products.

Translate research and client briefs into modelling problems and ensure actionable insights.

Work autonomously on well‑defined problems, collaborate with lead data scientists and engineers, and progressively own more complex modelling workstreams.

Key Responsibilities

• Feature and Model Development – design, engineer and test new model variants from survey, coded, or digital data sources to improve prediction accuracy and explainability.
• Integrate new features into experimental models, quantify impact and summarize results for senior management decision‑making.
• Document feature definitions, derivation logic and performance impact for replicability.
• Experimentation, Evaluation & Documentation – design and execute experiments and benchmarks comparing feature sets, algorithms or model configurations.
• Use appropriate evaluation metrics and validation schemes to ensure robust conclusions.
• Maintain clear experiment logs, notebooks, reports and dashboards.
• Contribute to continuous improvement of modelling best practices for Creative Spark AI.
• Act as owner of new products and solutions that generate incremental revenue on top of creative excellence’s core business.
• Translate understanding of Ipsos’s Creative Excellence business into new solutions with global and US product teams.
• Support innovative product development, new revenue streams and greater value from data assets.
• Communicate and stakeholder engagement – present modelling results and recommendations in clear, non‑technical language to stakeholders.

Skills & Qualifications

Education

• Master’s degree (or equivalent) in Data Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Econometrics, or related quantitative field.
• PhD is a plus but not required.

Experience

• 7–10 years of professional experience as a Data Scientist in applied machine learning.
• Hands‑on experience building and evaluating supervised learning models in real‑world use cases.
• Experience in product management or technical lead roles is a plus.
• Experience in marketing, advertising, media, or market research OR predictive modelling on survey, panel, or customer behavior data.
• Prior exposure to production or near‑production environments where models are deployed, monitored and iterated.

Technical Skills

• Proficiency in Python and main data and ML libraries (pandas, NumPy, scikit‑learn, plus optionally TensorFlow, PyTorch, CatBoost, XGBoost).
• Good working knowledge of SQL and querying large analytical datasets (BigQuery or similar cloud warehouses).
• Understanding of core ML concepts: feature engineering, regularization, model selection, cross‑validation, evaluation metrics, bias, overfitting, drift and robustness.
• Experience with NLP or Computer Vision applied to creatives.
• Experience with Google Cloud Platform and experiment tracking / MLOps tools (MLflow, model registries, CI/CD for ML).
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills with attention to detail and methodological rigor.
• Excellent communication skills.

About The Team

The Creative Excellence Service Line helps clients attain best‑in‑class advertising that drives business results through creative development, assessment and in‑market tracking.

Commitment to Diversity

Ipsos is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status or disability.

About Us

Ipsos is one of the world’s largest research companies and a leading full‑service research organization, providing data‑driven solutions, research, methods and insights to clients worldwide.

Benefits

Competitive base salary, generous paid time off, healthcare plans, wellness benefits, flexible workplace policy and a strong collaborative culture.