Senior Data Scientist - Consumer Behaviour Simulation

About Delta Labs

Delta Labs uses AI to simulate and predict consumer behaviour at scale. We build Elaiia, a simulation engine that generates AI Twins — intelligent synthetic agents that mirror real consumer populations. Our clients use Elaiia to simulate customer decisions before committing to them: pricing strategies, product launches, campaign messaging, channel allocation. We replace surveys, focus groups, and intuition with simulation-based evidence.

We're a small, focused team and we intend to stay that way. We give people ownership, trust, and the autonomy to do their best work. We work with urgency and expect new team members to match our pace. We seek individuals who are curious, rigorous, and want their work to have demonstrable impact. If you're drawn to the idea of a small team building something that hasn't existed before, let's build together.

About The Role

As a Senior Data Scientist at Delta Labs, you will advance the data foundation that Elaiia's synthetic agents are built on. We have a working trait space and simulation architecture — your job is to deepen it: refining which dimensions of consumer behaviour we model, improving how we operationalize them from raw data, and strengthening the profiles that drive accurate simulations. You will be part of the reasearch team that owns Elaiia's core simulation capabilities — the technology that enables our customers to test decisions against realistic populations before committing to them.

Responsibilities

• Extend and refine the trait space that underpins Elaiia's synthetic agents — improving which behavioural, attitudinal, and demographic dimensions we model and how we structure them
• Operationalize new psychometric scales, behavioural indices, and composite measures from raw and survey data
• Improve and evaluate simulation pipelines that produce population-level accuracy across the dimensions that matter for consumer decision-making
• Develop techniques for grounding agent behaviour in real-world data sources — surveys, behavioural traces, psychometric instruments, and domain-specific datasets
• Strengthen evaluation frameworks that measure simulation quality against known ground-truth distributions
• Identify and close gaps between simulated and observed consumer behaviour through iterative experimentation

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• Integrate custom client data sources into the simulation layer — writing and adapting code to ingest, transform, and map new datasets to our trait architecture
  
  
  

YOU MAY BE A FIT IF

• You have a PhD in quantitative marketing, statistics, psychometrics, cognitive science, or a related quantitative field — or equivalent depth from industry research
• You understand consumer behaviour research — segmentation, decision-making models, attitude measurement, conjoint analysis — and know how to go from theory to a computable measure
• You are comfortable working with large datasets in Python — data matching, merging, linking across heterogeneous sources, and writing production code to integrate them
• You are interested in using LLMs as a simulation substrate — not just for text generation, but for producing structured behavioural outputs that hold up under statistical scrutiny
• You have experience with synthetic data, agent-based modelling, or population simulation
• You use AI tools as a core part of your workflow and consider AI-assisted research and engineering the standard, not optional
• You communicate clearly about what is working and what is not, including when results are null or ambiguous
• You move fast and are comfortable producing work at high velocity without sacrificing rigour
  
  
  

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STRONG CANDIDATES MAY ALSO

• Have built systems that generate or evaluate synthetic populations at scale
• Have experience with survey methodology, psychometrics, or demographic modelling
• Have done work on agent-based simulation, synthetic data, or LLM-based behavioural modelling
• Have worked in an environment where shipping matters as much as rigour
  
  
  

LOCATION

This role is based in Switzerland. We work from Zürich and meet regularly in person. Candidates should be based in Switzerland or open to relocation.

Benefits

We offer a competitive salary, potential equity participation, and the opportunity to build a company from its earliest stages. Delta Labs is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications from all backgrounds.