Hostelworld is the world's leading Social Travel platform - a social network-powered OTA on a mission to help travellers find their people and create unforgettable moments together. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Ireland, we're a team of around 270 people serving hostel partners across more than 180 countries.
Since launching our social network in 2022, we've welcomed over 3.4 million social members who aren't just booking trips, they're messaging, finding events, meeting up and becoming powerful brand advocates. This community generates a rich proprietary dataset of 16 million+ chat messages and 17 million bookings, powering AI-driven personalisation and network effects that no generalist OTA can replicate.
We are not just another OTA - we created an entirely new category – Social Travel. If you want to shape the future of travel by putting people and shared experiences at the heart of it, you'll fit right in here - Learn more about our Team!
Our Culture
At Hostelworld, our culture is a direct reflection of our customers: adventurous, curious, and social. We have a shared love of travel that fuels our work and connects us on a deeper level. It’s a fast-paced environment that blends the agility and "scrappy" resourcefulness of a start-up with the experience and ambition of a global, publicly listed company.
We are a team of pragmatic optimists who are data-obsessed and results-driven. We value a ‘test and learn’ mindset, encouraging experimentation and empowering our teams to take calculated risks. We believe in doing the right thing—for our customers, our partners, and each other. We foster a supportive and collaborative atmosphere where diverse perspectives are celebrated, and where every team member has the opportunity to make a significant impact on our journey. We embrace the journey, not just the destination, and we seek leaders who will thrive in a dynamic environment and inspire their teams to do the same.
This role is based in Portugal. We have an office hub in Porto available for those who prefer a hybrid model where you can spend time with colleagues in-person. You will need to be able to commute to our office hub as required from time to time.
You will play a key role in a diverse, highly-talented Analytics & Insights team providing insights across a number of growth units including paid marketing, customer analytics and app analytics to support decision making at C and senior management level. The Marketing Data Scientist will play a pivotal role in driving data-informed marketing strategies and decisions, with a particular emphasis on managing and optimising Google Ads bidding algorithms. As a key member of the Analytics and Insights team, this role will involve close collaboration with paid marketing, app marketing, and data teams to uncover insights, optimise campaigns, and contribute to business growth.
You will hone and develop a wide range of technical skills in managing our data analytics and data science products. The paid analytics team require a person who is flexible, adaptable and able to translate business needs into measurable results. It’s a rewarding experience with exciting diverse work:
Bidding & spend optimisation
Develop, manage and optimise bidding algorithms for Google Ads campaigns (Search and Hotel Price Ads) using Python, translating business objectives into bidding logic that maximises profitability (Direct Margin).
Marketing measurement & incrementality
Design, run and analyse incrementality tests (geo-lift / holdout experiments) using causal inference methods such as synthetic control, Bayesian structural time series and difference-in-differences to quantify the true incremental impact of paid channels.
Design, implement and analyse A/B tests and other experiments to assess the impact of marketing initiatives, including sample-size, power and pre-registration standards.
Experience & Qualifications:
Applied causal inference: synthetic control, difference-in-differences, Bayesian structural time series (e.g. CausalPy, CausalImpact, PyMC, linearmodels).
Competitive salary & benefits
Enhanced annual leave plus 3 Wellbeing Days per year
Paid family leave (maternity, paternity, surrogacy & adoption)
Agile working (plus a Working from Abroad Policy!)
Support for your ongoing growth & development
Inclusive people policies (sickness, menopause, compassionate and fertility leave)
A chance to give back to your local community with 5 paid volunteering days
Grow others - We fundamentally believe that investing in growing others benefits everyone, whether it's helping them develop hard or soft skills. We want learning and growing to be part of our DNA to help makes us a better team, together.
Master it - We are obsessed with our area of expertise and enjoy developing our skills. We rarely take things at face value; we investigate, interrogate, and always look for ‘the why,’ and wherever possible, we use data to find the best solution.
Collaborate - We are in it together, for the tough stuff and the celebrations too. To achieve the best results, we need expertise from all areas of the organisation, and we wholeheartedly welcome diverse thinking.
Adapt - We work fluidly, adapting to new information and the evolving environment while staying committed to our goals. Innovation and experimentation fuel our projects and we’re never afraid to pivot.
Deliver - Our focus is always on the end result; we value outcomes over activity. We collaborate to deliver work at speed without dropping any of our other behaviours.
We believe in talented and diverse teams that reflect the diversity of our customers and the communities in which we operate. Everyone brings different perspectives and experiences. We lay out the above requirements to guide applicants to the experiences that we believe will allow you to be successful in the role. If you don’t meet them all, please consider applying if you think you can still perform the role as described.
