Senior Data Scientist (m/f/d) with management responsibility, part-time - remote or Karlsruhe

At Knuddels, our goal is to make social networks truly social again – moving away from simply consuming content and towards genuine human connection. At Knuddels, everyone should find three important people in their real life.

Our 100,000 members generate millions of events daily. Your task: Not only to analyze this data, but also to draw the right conclusions – and to ensure that data-driven insights reach the entire company and lead to concrete improvements.

Why part-time? We know there are outstanding data science professionals who can't or don't want to work full-time – whether due to family, further education, self-employment, or simply their life plans. For us, this isn't a compromise, but a conscious decision: we'd rather have the right person working part-time than the wrong person working full-time.

Your tasks

• Hands-on data analysis & data science: You analyze our complex data and extract valuable insights using data mining, clustering, forecasting, or recommendation classification. You ensure the accuracy of our data across various systems.
• Enabling data-driven decisions: You analyze our data, present the results clearly, and derive concrete strategic measures from them. You work closely with product management, community management, and the executive management team – not in an ivory tower, but as an equal sparring partner. You combine quantitative analyses with qualitative feedback from our community to enable well-informed decisions and establish best practices such as code reviews and documentation.
• Hands-on data analysis & data science: You will work operationally with our complex data and extract valuable insights through data mining, clustering, forecasting, and recommendation classification. You will ensure the accuracy of our data across various systems and establish best practices such as code reviews and documentation.
• Team Leadership & Data Culture: Our data science department is undergoing a transformation – and you'll be a key part of shaping it. You'll assume professional and long-term disciplinary leadership of a small team, foster the development of your colleagues, and further develop the department's structure. Together with management, you'll define the long-term data strategy and establish a genuine data culture within the company.

What do we offer you?

• Genuine part-time work, not full-time light : Your workload is realistically calculated, not simply scaled down.
• Flexibility that adapts to your life: Up to 100% remote work, trust-based working hours and the option of 10 unpaid "flexi-vacation days" in addition to 30 days of vacation.
• Genuine solidarity: We live an open, respectful and cooperative culture in which we support each other.
• Growth according to your wishes: Use 10% of your working time for further training and benefit from our coaching pool, in-house workshops and regular feedback.
• Focus on our own product (B2C): You can see immediately how your contribution is received by our community and helps to bring people closer together.
• Excellent equipment: We provide you with outstanding technical equipment. If you work completely remotely, we will also subsidize a portable air conditioner.
• Office in a prime location (Karlsruhe): With free breakfast buffet, freshly cooked lunch daily, fully air-conditioned and a huge roof terrace.
• We want to support your health: subsidy for gym/sports club membership.
• You can find all the benefits again at jobs.knuddels.de

What do we not offer?

• Dusty corporate structures
• Working on business customer projects (We are a B2C company)
• A far-fetched third bullet point, if we can only think of two :)
• Education: You have successfully completed a degree in computer science, mathematics, statistics or a comparable qualification.

• Business acumen: You can not only analyze data, but also explain it and translate it into practical benefits. You recognize patterns, understand their business implications, and think in terms of solutions for the product – not just algorithms.
• Communication skills: You explain complex concepts clearly to non-technical people and appear confident – ​​even when you have to question existing assumptions with data.
• Leadership potential: You're eager to take on responsibility – whether as a mentor, in project management, or through technical guidance. Formal leadership experience is a plus, but not a requirement. What's crucial is that you want to motivate and develop a team.
• Analytical strength: You have a quick grasp of concepts, work in a structured manner, and enjoy analyzing large amounts of data – both structured and unstructured.
• AI mindset: You understand AI (e.g., LLMs, Copilots) as an integral part of modern work. You use relevant tools routinely and have ideas on how we can profitably use AI for our data analyses or the product.
• Tech stack: Strong knowledge of SQL and Python (including frameworks like pandas and sklearn). Experience with statistical analysis and databases, as well as with Excel/Google Sheets for preparing and visualizing results. You have in-depth knowledge of machine learning (forecasting, clustering, categorization) and deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Language skills: Fluent German (at least C1 level) and English skills are required.
• Nice-to-have: Knowledge of Java and Mixpanel.