[As of June 2020, Quora has become a "remote-first" company.  This position can be performed remotely from anywhere in the world, regardless of any location that might be specified above.]

About Quora:

The vast majority of human knowledge is still not on the internet. Most of it is trapped in the form of experience in people's heads, or buried in books and papers that only experts can access. More than a billion people use the internet, yet only a tiny fraction contribute their knowledge to it. We want to democratize access to knowledge of all kinds — from politics to painting, cooking to coding, etymology to experiences — so if someone out there knows something, anyone else can learn it. Our mission is to share and grow the world's knowledge, and we're building a world-class team to help us achieve this mission.

About the Team:

Because Quora is such a data-driven company, our data scientists play a central role in the product development process by uncovering key insights from our data. As a data scientist, you'll work closely with engineers, product designers, and product managers to devise appropriate measurements and metrics, design randomized controlled experiments, build visualizations, and tackle hard, open-ended problems. You'll also develop tools and infrastructure to scale and automate the analyses that enable rapid product iteration. Quora has a wide range of rich data, giving you ample room for exploration and creativity. We use a variety of tools -- primarily Python and SQL--to analyze data and communicate results with the rest of the company.

About our Internship:

A Quora internship is not an ordinary internship. There is no busy work. Every project that our interns work on is important to the company and its goals. As a team, we are dedicated to holding high standards, developing a strong and passionate culture, and emphasizing impact. Interns play an important role in this, as they work alongside full-time employees as equals, working on the same projects that help drive the company and product forward. We expect interns to become valuable contributors to the team, as they work hand-in-hand with people ranging from engineering to design to business development.

We also realize that mentorship is important to allow interns to grow and develop skills in areas which they're looking to improve. Every intern will have a full-time data scientist as a mentor and weekly 1:1s with their managers to get feedback and ensure things are going well.

To give you a taste of what interns can do at Quora, here are some projects that data science interns have worked on in the past:

• Analyze external traffic patterns over time to better understand how changes in outside products cause increases or decreases in visits to Quora
• Study the usage differences between the English and Spanish Quora products to understand how various mechanics of Quora translate across different languages
• Develop methodology and prototype features in our internal experimentation platform to identify and capture novelty effects in experiments
• Investigate the effect of how “satisfying” a question page is on user engagement and clickthrough patterns through the rest of the product
• Understand effects of positional bias on home feed ranking to identify opportunities to improve ranking and feed engagement
• Improve the accuracy of a user engagement prediction model and understand what factors are important in determining new users' long term usage.
• Build a recommender system to suggest Quora topics to a user based on provided interests
• Evaluate statistical properties of various methods used to determine significance in ratio metrics, considering coverage, power, and feasibility
• Create dashboards and perform ad-hoc analyses to monitor and understand important product metrics

Responsibilities:

• Extract actionable insights from broad, open-ended questions to influence product strategy and drive roadmap decisions
• Analyze data to understand the root causes of metric movements and uncover growth opportunities
• Design and evaluate A/B tests to make informed recommendations on product changes
• Develop metrics and create dashboards to orient the direction of product development and track the success of the product

Minimum Qualifications:

• Third year undergraduate student or final year master or Ph.D. in a scientific or quantitative field
• Proficiency in using SQL and procedural programming languages (e.g. Python, R) to manipulate and analyze data
• Rigorous coursework in statistical techniques (e.g. hypothesis testing, regression)
• Demonstrated ability to exercise judgment and combine quantitative skills with product judgment to translate numbers into insights
• Demonstrated ability to clearly explain data results to cross-functional teams

Preferred Qualifications:

• Relevant past internship or research experience working with large data sets and experiments
• Experience in working with large data sets and distributed computing tools (Hive, Redshift)
• Experience pushing code and navigating a complex codebase
• Active Quora user with curiosity about the product

Further Reading

Check out these resources (all on Quora!) to learn more.

• Quora Data Science Team Session: https://www.quora.com/session/Data-Science/1 Quora data scientists answered a bunch of questions on Quora.
• Our Blog: Check out some of the things we've written up to share: https://www.quora.com/q/quoradata
• Machine Learning Engineer vs. Data Scientist: This is a commonly asked question. See https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-machine-learning-engineer-and-a-data-scientist-at-Quora. If you are primarily interested in machine learning, please consider applying to our machine learning engineering opportunities instead of data science opportunities.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

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