Description
The Walt Disney Company is seeking a highly analytical, strategic, and collaborative Games Principal Data Scientist to join the Disney Games & Digital Entertainment team.
In this high-impact position, you will partner closely with Product, Technology, Content, Marketing, Executive Leadership, and cross-enterprise teams to deliver data-driven insights that shape games product strategy, optimize player and audience engagement, improve monetization outcomes, and influence long-term business decisions.
Responsibilities:
- Serve as the primary games data science and analytics lead for Disney Digital Entertainment, acting as the central source of truth for games product performance, player behavior, and business insights
- Partner closely with leadership, cross-functional leads, and cross-enterprise teams to delivering actionable insights and strategic recommendations that inform critical business and product decisions
- Develop and deliver data-driven business and product performance analyses for senior leadership by synthesizing complex data into clear narratives, executive-level presentations, and strategy recommendations
- Develop and apply advanced analytical frameworks, statistical analyses, forecasting models, and behavioral segmentation approaches focused on player engagement, retention, churn, monetization, lifecycle behavior, and content performance
- Analyze gameplay telemetry, social engagement data, creator content trends, and streaming interaction data, and cross-TWDC engagement signals to identify growth opportunities and optimize user experiences across games and digital entertainment ecosystems
- Partner closely with cross-functional teams and leadership to define KPIs, measurement frameworks, instrumentation requirements, and scalable analytics solutions that support product development and strategic planning
- Lead deep-dive analyses on player progression systems, engagement funnels, franchise affinity, personalization opportunities, social behaviors, and monetization trends to support data-informed product strategy
- Collaborate with data engineering and platform teams to build scalable analytics infrastructure, event pipelines, and trusted datasets and self-service reporting solutions
- Act as a subject matter expert on games analytics, measurement strategy, and product performance insights, driving best practices across the organization
- Translate complex analytical findings and technical concepts into clear, compelling narratives and recommendations for technical and non-technical audiences, including senior leadership
Basic Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Economics, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field; advanced degree preferred
- 10+ years of experience in data science, advanced analytics, or quantitative product analytics, within gaming, streaming, or entertainment industries
- Proven experience applying statistical analysis, forecasting, experimentation frameworks, and behavioral analytics techniques to large-scale consumer and telemetry datasets
- Strong proficiency in SQL and Python or R, with hands-on experience working within modern cloud data ecosystems and analytics platforms such as Snowflake, Databricks, AWS, Tableau, and Looker
- Experience working with large-scale event-stream and gameplay telemetry datasets, including player behavior, audience engagement, content performance, progression systems, retention, and monetization analysis
- Familiarity with audience segmentation, personalization strategies, recommendation systems, or content optimization frameworks that support player engagement
- Strong understanding of player or consumer lifecycle analytics, engagement measurement, retention analysis, segmentation, monetization optimization, and experimentation methodologies including A/B testing
- Demonstrated ability to influence strategic decision-making through data-driven storytelling, executive communication, and cross-functional collaboration within fast-paced, matrixed organizations