Principal Product Economist - Poker

Job description

Level Up Your Career with Zynga! At Zynga, we bring people together through the power of play. As a global leader in interactive entertainment and a proud label of Take-Two Interactive, our games have been downloaded over 6 billion times—connecting players in 175+ countries through fun, strategy, and a little friendly competition. From thrilling casino spins to epic strategy battles, mind-bending puzzles, and social word challenges, our diverse game portfolio has something for everyone. Fan-favorites and latest hits include FarmVille™, Words With Friends™, Zynga Poker™, Game of Thrones Slots Casino™, Wizard of Oz Slots™, Hit it Rich! Slots™, Wonka Slots™, Top Eleven™, Toon Blast™, Empires & Puzzles™, Merge Dragons!™, CSR Racing™, Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells™, Match Factory™, and Color Block Jam™—plus many more! Founded in 2007 and headquartered in California, our teams span North America, Europe, and Asia, working together to craft unforgettable gaming experiences. Whether you're spinning, strategizing, matching, or competing, Zynga is where fun meets innovation—and where you can take your career to the next level. Join us and be part of the play! Position Overview: Zynga is looking for a strategic, analytical, and hands-on Principal Product Economist with experience in mobile games to join the world’s biggest social poker game! As an economy designer, you will oversee, implement and tune the in-game economy while optimizing user experience. You will utilize methodologies from economics, behavioral psychology, and business intelligence to strategically design and maintain a healthy free-to-play mobile game economy. The economy systems you will build and manage are core to game progression, reward payouts, and overall game economy balance. You will lead the conceptualization, modeling, and continuous optimization of the game’s economy - driving player engagement, retention, and monetization through data-informed design and smart experimentation. What You'll Do: Own the live operations economy and collaborate closely with product managers and analysts to define and execute its strategic direction. Act as the point of contact and subject-matter expert on all live operations economic aspects. Design and implement essential features that create a fun player experience, further the strategic vision of the product, and improve retention, acquisition, and monetization. Model, simulate, and tune complex economy systems including multiple currencies, sinks, faucets, and progression loops. Use A/B testing and other analytical methods to validate hypotheses, measure outcomes, and optimize performance. Proactively identify and improve underperforming systems, leveraging data-driven insights to enhance player experience and revenue. Develop predictive models and simulations to anticipate player behavior and maintain a stable, scalable economy. Collaborate cross-functionally to ensure economic systems integrate seamlessly with design, live ops, and monetization initiatives. Communicate economic insights and design rationales effectively to stakeholders and leadership. Stay up to date with market trends and perform proactive analyses of economy tuning in relevant competitive products. What You Bring: 5+ years of experience working on digital games, at least 3+ years focused on economy design. Excellent verbal and written communication skills, strong presentation abilities, and the capacity to influence and collaborate across all levels of the organization. Self-motivated, with the ability to balance multiple projects in parallel while working in a collaborative, agile environment with aggressive deadlines and shifting priorities. Autodidactic, with the ability to quickly learn new systems and tools, interpret technical specifications, understand feature configurations, and independently explore how game systems and economic models operate. Skilled at modeling and simulating planned changes, anticipating downstream effects, and adjusting prior to release. Analytical, detail-oriented, and capable of providing actionable solutions at every stage of the process. Advanced proficiency in Excel and SQL. Python experience is a plus. Passion for mobile and/or ca