Senior Economist

Expedia Group brands power global travel for everyone, everywhere. We design cutting-edge tech to make travel smoother and more memorable, and we create groundbreaking solutions for our partners. Our diverse, vibrant, and welcoming community is essential in driving our success.

Why Join Us? To shape the future of travel, people must come first. Guided by our Values and Leadership Agreements, we foster an open culture where everyone belongs, differences are celebrated and know that when one of us wins, we all win.

We provide a full benefits package, including exciting travel perks, generous time-off, parental leave, a flexible work model (with some pretty cool offices), and career development resources, all to fuel our employees' passion for travel and ensure a rewarding career journey. We’re building a more open world. Join us.

Senior Economist

Expedia Group's Economics and Experimentation Science team is looking for a Senior Economist to drive causal inference and marketplace optimization at scale—impacting billions of dollars in transaction value across one of the world's largest travel platforms.

You'll tackle high-stakes problems, including measuring incrementality in two-sided marketplaces, quantifying long-term value of customer behavior signals, and designing quasi-experimental methods to evaluate product changes that can't be measured using A/B testing techniques. Your work will directly shape how Expedia Group balances traveler experience, partner economics, and platform health.

This is a senior individual contributor role with high autonomy. You'll own end-to-end method development initiatives, influence product strategy at the executive level, and set technical standards for causal inference across the organization. You'll collaborate closely with ML engineers, data scientists, analysts, and product leaders who value rigorous econometric thinking.

In this role, you will:

• Build scalable econometric models (panel data methods, DiD, RDD, IV) to measure elasticity, changes in supplier behavior, and customer lifetime value in the presence of endogeneity, simultaneity, and platform dynamics

• Establish the technical roadmap for long-term impact measurement, moving beyond short-term experiment metrics to quantify sustained effects on customer retention, partner engagement, and marketplace equilibrium

• Design and execute causal measurement frameworks for marketplace interventions, including geo experiments, difference-in-differences, synthetic controls, and instrumental variable approaches, to isolate the true causal effect of product changes

• Partner with ML teams to integrate causal inference into production systems, informing ranking algorithms, pricing optimization, and recommendation engines with econometrically validated insights

• Translate complex econometric findings into clear executive narratives that drive multi-million-dollar product decisions, presenting to executive stakeholders with clarity and conviction

• Mentor data scientists and economists across the organization, elevating the rigor of causal reasoning and experimental design

Experience and Qualifications:

• PhD in Economics, Applied Economics, Econometrics, Statistics, or a related quantitative field

• 8+ years of relevant professional experience

• Solid foundation in microeconomic theory and applied econometrics, with the ability to apply appropriate causal inference techniques

• Demonstrated experience applying econometric methods to real-world business problems in tech, e-commerce, or marketplace environments

• Deep expertise in the causal inference toolkit: IV, DiD, RDD, synthetic controls, panel data methods, experimental design, metalearners, doubleML, causal forests

• Proficiency in Python or R with strong SQL skills to work with large-scale, noisy, real-world data, including the ability to query and process data

• Track record of influencing product strategy or business decisions through rigorous quantitative analysis—ideally with examples of work that shipped to production

• Exceptional communication skills: ability to explain econometric methodology, identifying assumptions, and business implications to non-technical executives

• Ability to work in a fast-paced business environment

Preferred Qualifications

• Publications or working papers in applied economics, econometrics, or quantitative methods (academic or industry venues)

• Experience with marketplace or platform economics: two-sided markets, network effects, dynamic pricing, or general equilibrium modeling

• Experience integrating causal models into ML pipelines or production systems

• Familiarity with modern AI/ML workflows and LLM-assisted analysis tools

• Background in travel, e-commerce, or large-scale consumer marketplaces

#LI-MC1

The total cash range for this position in Seattle is $173,000.00 to $242,500.00. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $277,000.00, which is the top of the range, based on ongoing, demonstrated, and sustained performance in the role.

Starting pay for this role will vary based on multiple factors, including location, available budget, and an individual’s knowledge, skills, and experience. Pay ranges may be modified in the future.

Expedia Group is proud to offer a wide range of benefits to support employees and their families, including medical/dental/vision, paid time off, and an Employee Assistance Program. To fuel each employee’s passion for travel, we offer a wellness & travel reimbursement, travel discounts, and an International Airlines Travel Agent (IATAN) membership. View our full list of benefits.

Accommodation requests If you need assistance with any part of the application or recruiting process due to a disability, or other physical or mental health conditions, please reach out to our Recruiting Accommodations Team through the Accommodation Request.

We are proud to be named as a Best Place to Work on Glassdoor in 2024 and be recognized for award-winning culture by organizations like Forbes, TIME, Disability:IN, and others.

Expedia Group's family of brands includes: Brand Expedia®, Hotels.com®, Expedia® Partner Solutions, Vrbo®, trivago®, Orbitz®, Travelocity®, Hotwire®, Wotif®, ebookers®, CheapTickets®, Expedia Group™ Media Solutions, Expedia Local Expert®, CarRentals.com™, and Expedia Cruises™. © 2024 Expedia, Inc. All rights reserved. Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners. CST: 2029030-50

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