OneMain Financial·Data Scientist·Technical Phone Screen
Jul 2026
Interviewed for a Data Scientist role at OneMain Financial and got hit with a pricing/economics problem that felt more like a micro econ exam than a DS interview. Three parts, escalating complexity, and the last one about LTV really threw me.
- Given a demand function and cost structure for a software subscription product, derive the profit-maximizing price and quantity using calculus, and compute the resulting maximum monthly profit.
- If the product has a hard capacity ceiling of 6,000 units per month, what price would you charge to maximize profit under that constraint?
- In a subscription context, if raising price by 10% causes monthly churn to double, how does that change your pricing model and how would you estimate the price that maximizes customer lifetime value rather than single-period profit?
“I remembered enough calculus to set up the marginal revenue equals marginal cost condition, but I second-guessed myself mid-derivation and redid part of it out loud which probably looked sloppy.”