Team Lead - Marketing Science & Operations

Overview

When travelers are searching for a hotel, we want the obvious choice to be trivago! Our leading metasearch engine is fast and 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 with petabytes of data to create an experience that saves time and money. In Düsseldorf, we seize opportunities to learn every day, innovate, and make an enduring mark on the travel industry. At trivago you will find teammates who embrace change and turn challenges into growth opportunities. Join trivago, work with a great team, and grow with us!

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

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.

If this sounds like you, read on & apply today!

What 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 and 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, 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 visa support from our talent support team, a relocation package, an interest-free newcomer loan, free language classes, and regular team and company-wide events to build experiences together.

Life happens. We offer self-determined vacation (minimum 25 vacation days), flexible working hours, up to 2 work-from-home days weekly, and remote work 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, access complimentary snacks and drinks in our kitchens, and choose from fitness options with our on-site gym, sports classes, and Urban Sports Club membership.