Analytics. Operations. Adventure.

FACEBOOK - DATA SCIENCE MANAGER (DECEMBER 2017 - PRESENT)

Manage team of data scientists responsible for understanding user preferences for News and building products to support consumer needs. Work closely with product, user research, design and engineering to build best in class products.

VENMO - HEAD OF ANALYTICS AND DATA ENGINEERING (JULY 2015 - NOVEMBER 2017) 

As the Head of Analytics, responsibilities included building out the analytics team, and eventually owning the data warehouse, pipelines, and overall infrastructure. On the analytics front, the team partnered closely with product to strategize and launch new products, design a new event tracking system, and launch A/B tests. The team was also responsible for risk and loss forecasting and understanding product impact on crucial business metrics. On the data engineering side, we maintained the entire data backend, including ingestion and processing of third party event tracking, managing Luigi-based data pipeline, and delivering data to hundreds of stakeholders. We developed robust monitoring and quality control to guarantee fast and accurate data delivery. Grew team from 1 to 10.

SQUARESPACE - STRATEGY OPERATIONS MANAGER (MAY 2013 - JULY 2015)

As a member of the Strategy Operations Team, I worked in the intersection of analytics, operations, and strategy. We worked with teams through the company to help make data-driven decisions through the use of statistics, writing code, SQL, and data visualization. I've worked with the Growth team, helping to understand and improve Online Radio spend, pay-per-click advertising, and the affiliate program. With the finance team, I modeled out company growth, wrote code to calculate revenue, and forecast future hiring needs for the customer service part of the organization. I currently work closely with the Customer Care org: working with the data team to create tooling solutions in python, collaborating with the leadership in Care to ensure we are looking at the right KPIs for the business, and writing ETL/data analytics scripts to process and collect relevant care data.

UBS - TRADER (JAN 2011 - MAY 2013)

As a trader at UBS, I managed a book of fairly quantitative securities, primarily consisting of interest-rate derivatives, including American and Canadian Swaps, Exotic Interest Rate Options, and Callable Agency bonds. Aside from the the day to day work of market-making for clients, I wrote pricing tools in VBA to help find inefficiencies in the market and provide signals for potential trades, and met with clients and the sales team to discuss potential trades in the market. 

FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION - DIVISION OF IMAGING AND APPLIED MATHEMATICS (2007-2010)

At the FDA, I worked three summers with the brilliant Dr. Subok Park to evaluate mathematical models that help in understanding quality of new cancer-screening devices, such as digital mammography systems. When the FDA receives applications for approval of these devices, they need to determine whether or not the new devices improves on the existing, and generally needs to hire physicians to do this work. We developed mathematical models that simulate an "observer" that tries to discern whether or not an image has a tumor, and depending on how well it does, we can ascribe that success to a high quality device. The results were published in a few papers, and if interested, the abstracts of two can be found here or here.

EDUCATION

Columbia University - M.A. Statistics

University of Maryland - Major Mathematics (w/honors), Minor in Computer Science

ADVENTURE

If it's unique, i'll do it. I love taking up hobbies and understanding enough to be dangerous: I've taken lessons in ping pong, piano, guitar, harmonica, bass, figure skating (oh man), sky diving, cooking, sake, and speed reading, and have yet to meet someone who has eaten stranger food. I speak 3 (and a quarter) languages, code in python, SQL, VBA, and sometimes R, and my dream is to become a professional Chinese yoyo star.

CONTACT

If you'd like to get in touch, feel free to send me an email at jwitten11@gmail.com.