Team Lead - Marketing Science & Operations

About trivago

When travelers are searching for a hotel, we want the obvious choice to be trivago! Our leading metasearch engine is super fast and constantly optimized - enabling millions of travelers to compare hotel prices from hundreds of booking sites and find great deals in just a few clicks. We use cutting-edge technology, real-time auction, and machine learning techniques with petabytes of data to create an experience - time and money saved! In the lively city of Düsseldorf, we seize opportunities to learn everyday, innovate, and make an enduring mark on the travel industry. At trivago you will find those who aren't afraid of change but rather embrace it, turning every challenge into a pathway for growth. Join trivago, work with a great team, and grow with us!

The Marketing Strategy and Intelligence team at trivago is a unique blend of data and business expertise, steering key marketing decisions through impactful data products, actionable insights, and deep market understanding. We're now establishing a Marketing Science and Operations team to embed data‑driven models and rigorous measurement into everyday marketing execution.

About the Role

As the Marketing Science and Operations Lead, you will set the vision, operating model, and roadmap for a multidisciplinary team spanning analytics, data science, and growth strategy. You'll partner with Brand and Performance Marketing, Product, and Finance to drive planning, measurement, and execution that accelerates pipeline, revenue, and brand impact.

You will work directly with senior business leaders across the organization, including C-suite to unlock growth opportunities using cutting edge modelling and experimentation. Together with your team, you will maintain, deliver and operationalize advanced analytics and ML solutions to complex marketing challenges, ensuring decisions are grounded in robust data, experimentation, and customer-centric thinking.

How you'll make an impact:

• Recruit, mentor, and develop a diverse, high-performing team; cultivate a culture of curiosity, impact, and operational excellence.
• Annual and quarterly marketing planning, including objective setting, investment allocation, and integrated roadmap.
• Establish measurement frameworks (north-star metrics, leading indicators, guardrails)
• Guide the analytics and data science agenda: market and segment sizing, funnel diagnostics, attribution, cohort and retention analyses, long-term forecast modeling, etc.
• Own Marketing BI: maintain regular reporting and deliver executive-ready dashboards and narratives that connect activity to business outcomes; drive action with clear recommendations.
• Prioritize and deliver the marketing data and analytics roadmap: audiences/segmentation, source-of-truth datasets, self-serve BI, and model operationalization.
• Improve end-to-end marketing processes and remove friction from planning to pipeline
• Align closely with Finance and C-Suite on budget planning, scenario modeling, and forecast accuracy.
• Translate complex analysis into clear business narratives for senior executives; influence decisions on investments, channels.

What you'll need to thrive:

• 8 years of experience in marketing strategy, marketing operations, or analytics, including 3 years leading multi-disciplinary teams.
• Proven track record building planning/measurement systems that tie marketing to revenue and margin impact
• Strong analytical toolkit: funnel analytics, attribution, forecasting.
• Exceptional business acumen and fluency partnering with Finance on budgets.
• Expertise in BI and data storytelling (e.g., Tableau, Power BI, Looker) and spreadsheet modeling
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management; comfortable presenting to executives and driving cross-functional alignment.
• People leadership experience hiring, coaching, and performance-managing analysts, data scientists, and product/ops talent
• Bachelor's degree in a quantitative, business, or related field; MBA or advanced quantitative degree a plus
• Excellent communication skills in English, both written and verbal.

Stand out with:

• Technical expertise in SQL and Python
• Experience operationalizing ML-driven use cases in marketing (propensity, uplift, next-best-action, budget optimization)
• Experience in the travel, e-commerce, or digital marketing industry

What you can look forward to:

As you grow, so do we. This is why at trivago, we prioritize your development, offer personalized coaching through Nilo, and provide workshops, educational meetups, conferences, free online learning courses, and access to a fully-equipped campus library.

Moving to join us? No problem. You can count on the visa support from our talent support team, a relocation package, interest-free newcomer loan, free language classes, regular team and company-wide events to build experiences together.

Life happens. We offer self-determined vacation (with a minimum of 25 vacation days), flexible working hours, up to 2 work from home days weekly. Additionally you can work remotely from a different location, within Germany or selected countries abroad for up to 20 days per year. You also get free access to the Heycare platform for personalized nanny assistance, and an on-campus kids room.

Enjoy your office days. Use your daily canteen budget to share lunch with colleagues in our canteen, help yourself to complimentary snacks and drinks in our kitchens, choose from a variety of fitness options with our on-site gym, sports classes, and Urban Sports Club membership, and enjoy the comfort of ergonomic desks and focused work areas.

Benefits:

• Hybrid remote model
• Visa support and relocation package
• Interest-free newcomer loan
• Free language classes
• Team and company-wide events
• Self-determined vacation (min. 25 days)
• Flexible working hours
• Up to 2 WFH days weekly
• Remote work option (up to 20 days/year within Germany/selected countries)
• Free access to Heycare platform (nanny assistance)
• On-campus kids room
• Daily canteen budget
• Complimentary snacks and drinks
• On-site gym, sports classes, and Urban Sports Club membership
• Ergonomic desks and focused work areas
• Personalized coaching (Nilo)
• Workshops, meetups, conferences, online learning, campus library

Salary: Not specified (EUR) Remote Model: Hybrid Country: Germany