Synchrony

Company Summary
Launched in 2009 as a private luxury
car service called UberCab.
Uber was valued more than $3 billion
after it introduced UberX in 2013.
In 2016, Uber launched its first
self-driving car services to select
customers in Pittsburgh.
Changed company name to Uber after complaints
from taxi drivers. Officially launched mobile app in
2010 and began attracting steady stream of
customers and drivers.
In 2015, Uber was entangled in the battle with
regulators, politicians and taxi industry after its
aggressive expansion. Uber entered on-demand
economy in the same year.
In October 2018, Uber proposed $120 billion IPO
expected in early 2019.
Senior Leadership View
Problems to solve with Data Science

● Pricing strategy - determine optimal price to meet demand (surge pricing)

○ KPI: Exit rate
● Demand heatmap - recommend higher demand locations to drivers
○ KPI: Time to pickup
● New market identification - identify potential new cities to expand into
○ KPI: Drivers-per-capita & riders-per-capita
● Customer Satisfaction - predict what rides are most likely to result in poor
ratings and recommend solutions
○ KPI: Ratings lift
Data View
● Geospatial:
○ Live Supply and Demand
○ All historical requests, cancellations, completed transactions
● Pricing
○ Driver earnings
○ Segmented by product type (UberX, UberBlack, etc.)
● User and Driver profiles
○ Driver and Customer ratings
○ Preferences (“Drive only on weekends from 5pm-11pm”; “Picked up from same location daily”)
● Clickstream
○ E.g. Exit status (i.e. User viewed price before exiting app)
Analytics Organization
- Decentralized Data specialists (scientists, engineers, product managers)
embedded in cross-functional teams across the business
- Customer Experience & Strategy
- Automation Platform
- Financial Intelligence
- Marketplace Forecasting
- AdTech
- Central data science team for R&D partnering with distributed teams
- Hybrid organizational structure promote specialized domain knowledge while driving
company-wide initiatives and preventing “data silos.”
Job Listing
Responsibility
● Leverage web traffic and performance data
to identify areas of opportunity.
● Combine clear product vision, deep
technical skills and powerful data analysis
to improve the algorithms that run Uber’s
vast worldwide marketplace every minute of
the day.
● Participate in cross-functional project
planning/prioritization meetings,
stakeholder meetings, etc.
Qualifications
● Strong quantitative background. MS or PhD
preferred.
● 3+ years of experience as a data scientist at a
company with global operations.
● Expertise with R and Python, experience with big
data using technologies like Hadoop, Hive, and Spark
a plus.
● Great communication skills, organized, able to
multitask and be a team player.
Base Salary: $120,000
 S I G M A - Summary

S ources of Data I nnovation G rowth Mindset M arket Opportunities A nalytics

(Expert) (Expert) (Expert) (Proficient) (Expert)
Sources of Data
● Velocity - 5.5 Million rides per day
● Precision: Routes, speeds, wait time, reviews, payments,
supply, demand
● Variety - Geospatial, ledgers, demand and supply
forecasts, driver profiles, customer profiles, etc.
● Scale - 1.5 Million drivers, 40 Million customers/month
in 2017

1. www.marketingcharts.com/digital/video-75495
2. https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/netflix-250-million-hours-1202010393/
 Innovation
During times of peak ridership… Uber would put ‘Surge Pricing’ into effect, raising the price anywhere from 1.5x to 7x of
normal… Uber claimed they went into effect automatically whenever demand in a given area exceeded supply

● Build the business on the premise that every action in the

company is recorded to improve customer experience
● Driver incentives to meet customer demand
○ “Complete ten trips on Sunday nights South of Chicago” = $200
●
● Reviewing all actions real-time and in the past
○ “God View” of real-time demand and supply
○ Test efficacy of current models, and examine how model tweaks
perform in millions of test-cases
● Anticipate surge pricing and incentivize drivers early
● Uber Eats*
Growth Mindset

● In addition to distributed data scientists, centralized data

science team performs data exploration and
experimentation to discover insights that affect all areas
of the business
● Data viewed as an asset - obtaining new data from new
sources allows the data science team to continue
extracting new insights
Market Opportunities

● Captures meaningful and valuable data for every ride

● Leverages data to enable decision-making at every level of
the business: corporate, driver, and rider
● Analyzes external data to effectively identify potential new
markets (e.g. UberEats) - as well as when to leave a market
(e.g. UberRush)
Analytics

● Advanced algorithms used at every level of the business

● Data readily available to data scientists due to robust
data infrastructure backed by skilled data engineers
● Active research & development to build cutting-edge
tools and algorithms to more effectively serve both riders
and drivers, and to ultimately increase profits