Scientist Jobs in San Diego, CA
Scientist jobs in San Diego are concentrated in Torrey Pines, Sorrento Valley, and the Kearny Mesa biotech corridor, with strong demand across life sciences, pharmaceutical research, and defense analytics. Employers actively hiring include Bristol Myers Squibb, Intuit, and ByteDance. See the openings below and apply to the ones that match your experience.
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Overview
Company Overview
Intuit is the global financial technology platform that powers prosperity for the people and communities we serve. With approximately 100 million customers worldwide using products such as TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp, we believe everyone should have the opportunity to prosper. We never stop innovating to make that possible.
Team Overview
The TurboTax team is evolving how we understand, build, and scale new sources of growth. We are developing deeper visibility into emerging customer needs, acquisition opportunities, engagement models, and cross product experiences.
As part of this transformation, we are looking for a Staff Data Scientist to help shape the strategy and measurement of TurboTax’s next generation of growth capabilities.
This role is ideal for someone who thrives in zero-to-one environments at the intersection of data, experimentation, storytelling, and business leadership. You will help teams evaluate nascent opportunities, identify the strongest signals of customer and business value, and translate early learnings into clear strategic direction.
Role Overview
As a Staff Data Scientist in Emerging Growth Strategy & Intelligence, you will lead the development of analytical frameworks and insights for new acquisition, engagement, and customer-growth initiatives.
You will partner with leaders across Product, Marketing, Expert Services, and Operations to assess emerging opportunities, shape experimentation strategies, and determine which new capabilities should be refined, scaled, or deprioritized.
The portfolio may include new customer acquisition models, year-round engagement experiences, appointment and consultation offerings, retention initiatives, and cross-product opportunities. Because many of these capabilities are newly established, you will help define how success is measured rather than applying existing performance frameworks.
You will combine rigorous analysis with strong business judgment to bring clarity to ambiguous questions, create compelling performance narratives, and help leadership make confident investment decisions.
Responsibilities
Responsibilities
Emerging Growth Strategy
Partner with business and functional leaders to identify, evaluate, and prioritize new acquisition, engagement, and customer-growth opportunities. Translate customer behavior, market signals, and business performance into strategic recommendations.
Zero-to-One Measurement
Develop measurement strategies for nascent products, programs, and business models where established benchmarks and metrics may not yet exist. Define leading indicators, learning milestones, success criteria, and pathways to scale.
Experimentation and Learning Agendas
Shape analytical and experimentation roadmaps for emerging initiatives. Help teams move from broad hypotheses to measurable tests, interpret results in context, and determine the next best action.
Customer Lifecycle Intelligence
Build a deeper understanding of how customers engage with TurboTax before, during, and after tax season. Identify opportunities to strengthen acquisition, early commitment, year-round engagement, retention, and long-term customer value.
Executive-Facing Visualization and Storytelling
Develop compelling visualizations, dashboards, and presentations that enable leadership to quickly understand performance, tradeoffs, and emerging opportunities. Bring simplicity and clarity to complex or incomplete analytical narratives.
Scalable Performance Frameworks
Create analytical frameworks that connect early customer signals to longer-term business outcomes. Establish consistent metrics, definitions, and decision criteria as new initiatives mature.
Cross-Functional Influence
Serve as a trusted data science partner to senior leaders across Marketing, Product, Expert Services, and Operations. Facilitate alignment through data and create a shared understanding of hypotheses, performance drivers, risks, and opportunities.
Growth Portfolio Intelligence
Develop integrated views of the emerging-growth portfolio to help leaders understand where momentum is building, where additional learning is required, and where resources may generate the greatest impact.
Data-Driven Operating Rhythm
Support business reviews, investment decisions, and planning cycles with analytical views that reveal progress, key learnings, customer response, and the drivers of growth.
Thought Leadership and Enablement
Champion best practices in experimentation, measurement, visualization, and decision science. Mentor other data scientists and analysts and contribute to a culture of rigorous, data-informed innovation.
Qualifications
Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience in data science, analytics, business intelligence, or a related field, ideally within consumer technology, financial technology, marketplaces, or SaaS environments.
- Proven track record of shaping strategy and influencing executive decision making through data.
- Experience supporting zero to one products, emerging business models, growth initiatives, or other highly ambiguous problem spaces.
- Strong expertise in experimentation, performance measurement, customer analytics, and causal or decision-oriented analysis.
- Demonstrated ability to define success metrics and learning frameworks for initiatives without established benchmarks.
- Strong business acumen across customer acquisition, engagement, retention, product strategy, and operations.
- Expertise in data visualization tools such as Tableau, Power BI, Looker, or similar platforms.
- Advanced SQL proficiency and experience using Python or R for analysis, modeling, and automation.
- Exceptional storytelling and communication skills, with the ability to craft clear and compelling business narratives from complex or incomplete data.
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional initiatives and deliver impact in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
- Ability to balance analytical rigor with speed, judgment, and pragmatic decision-making.
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Intuit provides a competitive compensation package with a strong pay for performance rewards approach. This position may be eligible for a cash bonus, equity rewards and benefits, in accordance with our applicable plans and programs (see more about our compensation and benefits at Intuit®: Careers | Benefits). Pay offered is based on factors such as job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and work location. To drive ongoing fair pay for employees, Intuit conducts regular comparisons across categories of ethnicity and gender.
The expected base pay range for this position is:Mountain View $194,000 - $262,500
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Find Scientist JobsScientist Job Market in San Diego
Who's Hiring
- Bristol Myers Squibb47

- Intuit35

- ByteDance35

- Sharp HealthCare35

- Leidos23

Top Industries Hiring
- Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals47
- Education12
- Chemicals & Materials12
- Non-Profit & Social Services12
Scientist Jobs in San Diego: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get a scientist job in San Diego?
Focus your search on San Diego's Torrey Pines and Sorrento Valley corridors, where biotech, genomics, and pharmaceutical employers cluster most densely. Candidates with hands-on wet lab experience, familiarity with GMP environments, or backgrounds in oncology and immunology research tend to stand out locally. Networking through BIOCOM San Diego, the region's life sciences trade association, also opens doors that job boards alone often miss.
Which companies hire scientists in San Diego?
Employers hiring scientists in San Diego right now include Bristol Myers Squibb, Intuit, and ByteDance, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of August 2026. San Diego's employer mix skews heavily toward mid-size biotech firms and large pharmaceutical companies with research campuses, alongside federal contractors tied to the Navy and defense sector in Kearny Mesa and Point Loma.
Are there remote scientist jobs in San Diego?
Yes, but only selectively: hands-on bench and lab roles require on-site presence by nature, while bioinformatics, data science, and regulatory affairs positions are far more remote-compatible. About 44% of scientist openings tied to San Diego are remote or hybrid as of August 2026, with those flexible arrangements concentrated most in computational and clinical research functions rather than wet lab or manufacturing roles.
How can I get a scientist job in San Diego with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path in San Diego is a research associate or lab technician role at one of the many mid-size biotech startups in Sorrento Valley that regularly hire candidates fresh from university programs at UC San Diego or San Diego State. Contract research organizations in the area also bring on entry-level scientists for clinical trial support. A strong academic project portfolio or any internship with a San Diego biotech, even unpaid, moves a resume past the screening stage.
Which industries hire the most scientists in San Diego?
Most scientist openings in San Diego sit in Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals, Education, and Chemicals & Materials, per current listings on Migrate Mate as of August 2026. San Diego's position as one of the country's top three biotech hubs, anchored by decades of investment from institutions like the Salk Institute and Scripps Research, keeps life sciences and pharmaceutical demand consistently higher here than in most other U.S. markets.
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