Craft: Data, Analytics & Strategy Job Description:
Join Candy Foundation to help make Candy’s core gameplay faster, smarter, and more fun. You’ll be a hands‑on Senior Data Scientist working across Level Automation, Decision Automation, and Developer Experience: building the models, metrics, and evaluation frameworks that let teams generate, validate, and operate high‑quality levels, automate live decisions safely, and speed up how developers build and ship. Therefore getting better experiences to players sooner.
Your role within our Kingdom
* Partner with Product, Engineering, and Analytics to define data‑driven capabilities across Level and Decision Automation, and Developer Experience by building detect → act → measure loops that improve speed, safety, and quality of delivery.
* Develop robust modelling and measurement for level quality and live decisioning: proxy/operational gameplay metrics, reliability checks, drift detection, and impact alignment to business outcomes.
* Build and productionize models and analytical tools that support:
o Automated playtesting and simulation signals
o Difficulty and progression evaluation
o Tweak/adjustment explainability and guardrails
o Pre‑player validation of new mechanics/elements
o Decision policies for live operations (e.g., contextual bandits/online learning) with strong safety guardrails
o Developer experience analytics (e.g., CI signal quality, pipeline reliability, experiment velocity)
* Design offline/online evaluation strategies, including A/B tests where appropriate, to connect gameplay/decision proxies to retention and revenue impact.
* Contribute to shared data products (datasets, features, dashboards) that improve observability of level, decision, and developer experience across games.
* Raise the bar on scientific rigor, documentation, and reproducibility; mentor others and shape best practices across Candy Foundation.
What you’ll work on
* Level quality scoring and validation: define reward functions/scorecards aligned with product intent and iterate via periodic review.
* Scalable tweak intelligence: model the effect of tweaks on difficulty and flow; provide clear explanations for operators and designers.
* New gameplay element assessment: pre‑launch evaluation and safety checks that reduce reliance on post‑launch data.
* Experimentation readiness: frameworks that shorten time‑to‑player while protecting player experience with strong evaluation guardrails.
* Observability: pipelines and dashboards for predicted vs. actual performance, detecting drift and maintaining model-health.
Skills to create thrills
* Proven track record driving impact through statistics‑first data science: problem framing → rigorous experimentation → modelling → deep‑dive analyses → clear recommendations.
* Strong foundations in statistics and experimentation: hypothesis testing, power analysis, variance reduction, causal reasoning basics, measurement strategy, and pitfalls.
* Proficiency in practical modelling and analytical workflows (e.g., Python/R/SQL) to run experiments, build interpretable models, and perform deep dives.
* Excellent communication and stakeholder partnership; ability to translate analysis into decisions and influence cross‑functional roadmaps.
* High standards for rigor and reproducibility (clean analysis, documentation, peer review); bias toward simplicity over unnecessary complexity.
Bonus points
* Experience with simulation, reinforcement learning for sequential decision problems.
* Background in games, gameplay analytics, or content automation.
* Familiarity with Candy/Candy‑like level design concepts and evaluation.
* Experience building internal data/ML tooling that accelerates adoption.
Ways of working
* Cross‑functional: embedded within Candy Foundation; partnering closely with Candy Crush teams and Shared Tech collaborators.
* Scope: senior IC with mentorship responsibilities; expected to drive initiatives end‑to‑end and influence technical direction.
* Hiring manager based in Barcelona; team collaborates across locations (hybrid-friendly).
Tech environment (examples)
* Languages/Stacks: Python, SQL; PyTorch/TensorFlow; notebooks + experiment tracking.
* Data & Infra: BigQuery, Git‑based workflows, CI/CD; dashboards for model/data observability.
Why join Candy Foundation
* Impact at scale on one of the world’s most‑played games.
* Push the frontier of level automation: unify fragmented workflows into a reliable, AI‑powered ecosystem that delivers high‑quality content sooner.
* Work with a pragmatic, collaborative team that values principled measurement, player experience, and shipping improvements continuously.
Ready to make Candy’s best levels reach players faster — with science?
About King
With a mission of Making the World Playful, King is a leading interactive entertainment company with more than 20 years of history of delivering some of the world’s most iconic games in the mobile gaming industry, including the world‑famous Candy Crush franchise, as well as other mobile game hits such as Farm Heroes Saga. King games are played by more than 200 million monthly active users. King, part of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), has Kingsters in Stockholm, Malmö, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Malta. More information can be or by following us on LinkedIn, @lifeatking on Instagram, or @king_games on X.
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