Head of Experimentation at LaunchDarkly
United States
$256k - $414k
<h4><strong>About the Job:</strong></h4> <p>Feature management and experimentation have converged into a single market, and the buying dynamic at the top has shifted. Engineering teams are no longer the sole evaluator — data scientists and data-focused PMs now carry equal weight on the largest deals. The bar for statistical depth, warehouse ergonomics, and experiment-first workflows is rising quickly.</p> <p>In traditional experimentation we have built the foundation: a trusted runtime control plane, a growing experimentation engine, and early warehouse-native capabilities. We are winning lower-maturity buyers at healthy rates. We are not yet consistently winning the most sophisticated data organizations. Closing that gap is the job.</p> <p>In AI experimentation, we have an early lead: the AI-native tooling category has invested in evaluation and conceded production experimentation, and we already have the primitives (statistical significance, multi-armed bandits, experiment-aware guardrails) that no AI-native competitor ships. Extending that lead is the other half of the job.</p> <p>This leader will own whether LaunchDarkly becomes the definitive experimentation platform in an AI-accelerated world.</p> <h4>Responsibilities:</h4> <ul> <li><strong>Own the Experimentation pillar.</strong> Direct leadership of the Product team. Partner with Engineering and Design counterparts in a triad model. Accountable for the pillar's strategy, roadmap delivery, and commercial outcomes. Make the investment case across the in-product experimentation experience, the warehouse-native analysis layer, and the infrastructure that scales them.</li> <li><strong>Make experimentation the measurement layer of the AI SDLC.</strong> Partner with our AI product, observability, and core feature management leaders to productize the capabilities we already have as AI-native primitives. Build a closed loop from offline evaluation through production experiments, to automatic promotion and rollback, to a self-improving feedback loop for agents.</li> <li><strong>Win the high-maturity buyer.</strong> Earn the technical confidence of senior data scientists and data-focused PMs. Decide what statistical depth, warehouse coverage, and experiment-first workflow capabilities are non-negotiable, and get them shipped on a timeline that wins pivotal reference deals.</li> <li><strong>Make warehouse-native a weapon.</strong> Expand coverage across major data warehouses and query layers. Deliver parity on analysis-only mode, variance reduction, ratio and percentile metrics, exposure validation, and arbitrary-window analysis.</li> <li><strong>Operate a high-performing function.</strong> Run a disciplined roadmap, ship predictably against quarterly commitments, drive AI-assisted engineering productivity inside the org, and hire where gaps exist.</li> <li><strong>Be the external face of the category.</strong> Credibly represent the product with Data scientists, PMs, experimenters, analysts, and partners. Translate the strategy to the field and equip sales to win head-to-head.</li> </ul> <h4>How you'll be measured: </h4> <ul> <li>Win rate on experimentation-involved deals, especially head-to-head competitive evaluations — step change in the first year, sustained improvement thereafter.</li> <li>Reference-grade customers at the top of the maturity curve, including named strategic logos.</li> <li>Monthly active customers and active-account ARR growth against plan.</li> <li>Experimentation attach rate on new and expansion enterprise deals.</li> <li>Engineering throughput — roadmap delivery velocity and AI-assisted development adoption inside the function.</li> </ul> <h4>Qualifications:</h4> <ul> <li>Senior product leader (GM, VP, or equivalent) with a track record of owning a product line that competes on statistical rigor and data infrastructure.</li> <li>Deep, operator-level fluency in experimentation methodology: causal inference, variance reduction, ratio metrics, sequential testing, exposure design, multi-armed bandits, and composite/multi-objective metrics — and the realities of running these at scale against production data warehouses and against non-deterministic systems where output variance, not just user variance, drives sample-size and significance decisions.</li> <li>Has earned credibility with data science leaders and experimentation specialists at sophisticated organizations — and can recruit them.</li> <li>Has led a function that includes engineering, design, and data science. Comfortable setting a multi-quarter roadmap, championing investment allocation, and reporting results to an executive team and board.</li> <li>Clear, direct communicator. Decides fast with incomplete information. Prefers shipping and learning to requirements documents.</li> <li>Opinionated about where experimentation is going in an AI-native world — and specifically, how agents and autonomous systems will use experimentation infrastructure differently than human teams do.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Preferred Qualifications: </strong></p> <ul> <li>You have built or scaled experimentation at an organization where it was core infrastructure, not a secondary analytics capability.</li> <li>You have personally won competitive evaluations where a sophisticated data-science organization was the deciding voice.</li> <li>You have shipped warehouse-native data products and understand the operational realities of running experiments directly against customer data infrastructure.</li> <li>You see experimentation as how software teams prove that any change — whether built by a person or an AI agent — actually worked. That evidence layer is core infrastructure, not a reporting afterthought.</li> </ul> <p class="p1"><strong>Pay:</strong></p> <p class="p1"><em>Target pay ranges based on Geographic Zones* for Level M5: </em></p> <ul class="ul1"> <li class="li1">Zone 1: <em>San Francisco/Bay Area or NYC Metropolitan Area, Boston, Seattle</em> - <em>$<span class="collapsed-field-text">301,000 - $414,000</span></em>**</li> <li class="li1">Zone 2:<em> Irvine, LA, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Austin, Portland, Philadelphia, Chicago - $<span class="collapsed-field-text">271,000 - $373,000</span></em>**</li> <li class="li1">Zone 3: <em>All other US locations - $<span class="collapsed-field-text">256,000 - $352,000</span></em>**</li> <li class="li1" style="font-weight: bold;"><strong><span class="collapsed-field-text">All Zones inclusive of 20% Bonus</span> </strong></li> </ul> <p class="p1"><em>LaunchDarkly operates from a place of high trust and transparency; we are happy to state the pay range for our open roles to best align with your needs. Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, and location.</em></p> <p class="p1"><em>*Within the United States, our geographic pay zones are defined by counties surrounding major metropolitan areas.</em><br><em>**Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), health, vision, and dental insurance, and mental health benefits in addition to salary.</em></p> <h4><strong>About LaunchDarkly:</strong></h4> <p>Modern software delivery was supposed to be the foundation for a thriving digital business but reality has proven otherwise. Slow, inefficient development cycles, costly outages, and fragmented customer experiences are preventing developers from building their best software. The LaunchDarkly platform helps developers innovate on new features faster while protecting them with a safety valve to instantly rewind when things go wrong. Developers can target product experiences to any customer segment and maximize the business impact of every feature. And by gradually rolling out new application components, they escape nightmare "big-bang" technology migrations. </p> <p>The LaunchDarkly platform was built to guide engineers to the next frontier of DevOps by:</p> <ul> <li>Improving the velocity and stability of software releases, without the fear of end customer outages</li> <li>Delivering targeted experiences by easily personalizing features to customer cohorts</li> <li>Maximizing the business impact of every feature through the ability to experiment and optimize</li> <li>Coordinating the release and optimization of software to provide consistent experiences across mobile platforms and device types</li> <li>Improving the effectiveness and productivity of engineering teams, by providing insights into engineering cadence and stability</li> </ul> <p>At LaunchDarkly, we believe in the power of teams. We're building a team that is humble, open, collaborative, respectful and kind. 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, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. LD invites any applicant to review our written Affirmative Action Plan. To do so, contact People Ops at <a class="notion-link-token notion-focusable-token notion-enable-hover" href="mailto:hr@launchdarkly.com" data-token-index="1"><span class="link-annotation-unknown-block-id--893544457">hr@launchdarkly.com</span></a>. </p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><strong>Do you need a disability accommodation?</strong></span></p> <p class="p1">Fill out this <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdYb_7upYMtdRVXzvXGHGfQw0pU2FNma-6Rwp-I6NjKm7SYNw/viewform"><span class="s2">accommodations request form</span></a> and someone from our People Operations team will contact you for assistance. </p> <p class="p1"><strong>Your safety matters to us.</strong> To protect yourself from potential scams, LaunchDarkly recruiters will only contact you from <a href="https://launchdarkly.slack.com/team/UKEE4GBS6" target="_blank">@LaunchDarkly</a>.com email addresses or via LinkedIn from "Verified Recruiter" accounts.<strong> </strong>Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate LaunchDarkly recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before making a job offer. LaunchDarkly will never make a job offer without conducting a formal interview process. Our interview process does not involve asking detailed questions by email. If you are ever unsure about a communication that you receive, don't click any links—visit <a href="https://launchdarkly.com/careers/" target="_blank">Careers | LaunchDarkly</a> directly for confirmed job openings and links to apply.</p> <p class="p1">Please notify us of any fraudulent representation by sending an email to <a href="mailto:careers@launchdarkly.com" target="_blank">careers@launchdarkly.com</a>.</p>
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