2025 PhD Scientist Internship (Eater Pricing and Incentives), United States
We’re looking for PhD candidates to work with the Eater Pricing and Incentives team as a Scientist intern during summer 2025 (12 weeks). As an intern, you will be embedded in a product team working on solving real-world Uber problems under the supervision of an analyst on that team, and will have the opportunity to partner closely with Scientists, Software Engineers, Product Managers, and other cross functional partners.
About the Role
Have you ever ordered a car service on Uber, and when the ride arrives, wondered how it got to you so fast? Ever ordered food on UberEats and wondered where the driver was before receiving your order and how long it took to get to the restaurant or if your order was ready when the courier arrived? Ever wondered why your grocery delivery from Uber always has the best apple picked? If so, Uber is for you. In our Sciences division, we strive to make magic within Uber’s marketplace. This requires judgment to make difficult trade-offs, blending algorithms with human resourcefulness, and the ability to build simplicity from complexity. When we get the balance right for everyone, Uber magic happens. We build systems to peer into the future to craft the most cost-efficient marketplace for matching supply and demand. We are passionate about using innovative economics, machine learning, and scalable distributed software that automates and optimizes every aspect of this intricate dance between participants of the marketplace.
We are involved in every stage of the product development cycle and use data to inform product decisions, build models to power our solutions, and also develop platform tools that are used across teams with a primary focus on Mobility and Delivery. We work with millions of earners across the globe to make this magic happen and want you to join us!
UberEats is Uber's on-demand food, grocery and convenience delivery business. It currently operates in over 45 countries. Delivery is a 3-sided marketplace, consisting of Eaters, Couriers, and Merchants.
About the Team
On the Eater Pricing and Incentives Science team, we tackle challenging pricing problems to maximize efficiency and maintain reliability in the three-sided marketplace (eater, courier/delivery partner, and restaurant) of Uber Eats. We are working on setting base delivery and service fees for consumers, and targeted promotions for user-restaurant pairs. The Eats Pricing Data Science team develops algorithms to find the perfect price every time an agent in the marketplace makes a decision. Members of the pricing team use elements of demand estimation, causal machine learning, experimentation, and optimization to set prices that account for heterogeneity in demand elasticities.
What You’ll Do
- Work with a mentor closely to define a business problem, scope a project, develop, and prototype the solution using data-driven approaches
- Work with engineers and product managers to turn prototypes into scalable solutions
- Present findings to leaders to inform decisions
- Establish standard methodologies for science such as modeling, coding, analytics, optimization, and experimentation
- Conduct experiments to drive business decisions
Basic Qualifications
- Pursuing a Ph.D. majoring in Economics, Operations Research, Statistics, Machine Learning, or other related quantitative fields
- Candidates should have at least one semester/quarter left of their education after finishing the internship
- Strong problem solving and analytical abilities
Preferred Qualifications
- Coding proficiency in areas such as R, Spark, SQL, Python and AB Testing
- Background in data visualization via open-source libraries/packages or third-party tools (i.e. Tableau, Mixpanel, Looker, or similar)
- Knowledge of underlying mathematical foundations of statistics, machine learning, optimization, stochastic processes, economics, and analytics
- Experience in the following areas: Exploratory Data Analysis, Statistical Analysis, Model Development, Operations Management, Revenue Management and Pricing, Advertising, Experimental Design, Assortment Planning, Transportation
- 0-2 years of prior work experience in an analytical setting
- Organized, detail oriented and able to work independently on multiple projects at once
- Ability to communicate effectively with both technical and business partners
- Open to feedback, excellent at implementing newly learned ideas and concepts
- Research mentality with a bias towards action to structure a project from idea to experimentation to prototype to implementation
- Independence, self-starter mindset, excellent communication, and outstanding follow-through - you energetically tackle your work and love the responsibility of being individually empowered