Director - Data Science & Machine Learning (Logistics)

Takeaway; United States; Hybrid; USD 202,000 - 270,000; Full time

Job summary

Just Eat Takeaway.com is seeking a Director of Data Science & ML to lead a global team delivering real-time decisions for demand forecasting, courier assignment, and dynamic pricing. You will shape strategy, drive low-latency models at marketplace scale, and manage cross-functional leaders across time zones.

You will build incentive designs, oversee MLOps standards, and guide AI initiatives that improve delivery times, courier utilization, and network health while collaborating with product and

Qualifications

• Leadership experience in Data Science, ML or Operations Research, managing managers across time zones.
• Real-time ML and marketplace optimisation experience.
• Experience taking models to low-latency production at scale.

Responsibilities

• Deliver measurable improvements in delivery time, courier utilisation, cost per order and pay efficiency.
• Own strategy and roadmap for real-time decision systems at marketplace scale.
• Shape courier behaviour through incentive design and causal modelling.
• Lead Operations Research agenda including optimisation and simulation for capacity planning.
• Ensure validation before production with backtesting and simulation frameworks.
• Own ML platform quality and MLOps standards including CI/CD and drift monitoring.
• Drive experimentation and causal inference linking short-term results to long-term outcomes.
• Build applied AI delivering value, including LLM-based products for couriers and ops.
• Build the organisation by hiring and developing managers and forming partnerships.
• Collaborate with Logistics Product/Engineering on dispatch, estimations, pay and supply/demand actions.

Skills

Leadership in DS/ML

Real-time ML

Low-latency production

Experimentation & causal inference

Stakeholder management

pragmatic AI leadership

Economics of marketplaces

Education

Advanced degree in quantitative field

Tools

CI/CD

MLOps

Model serving

Experimentation platforms

Job description

Ready for a challenge? Then Just Eat Takeaway.com might be the place for you. We're a leading global online delivery platform, and our vision is to empower everyday convenience. Whether it's a Friday-night feast, a post-gym poke bowl, or grabbing some groceries, our tech platform connects tens of millions of customers with hundreds of thousands of restaurant, grocery and convenience partners across the globe.About this role Our logistics network spans 16 markets, hundreds of thousands of couriers and more than 350 million orders a year. Behind every order are real-time decisions: who delivers it, when, and at what price. Models running in production make them. We are looking for a Director of Data Science & Machine Learning to lead the function behind those decisions and take the optimisation of our network to the next level. This is a leader-of-leaders role: a global team of 90+ data scientists, operations research scientists, ML engineers and MLOps engineers, led through managers and principal data scientists. Location: Hybrid, 3 days a week from our London or Amsterdam office and 2 days working from home

These are some of the key components to the position:

• Deliver measurable improvement in delivery time, courier utilisation, cost per order, and the efficiency of courier pay.
• Own the strategy and roadmap for real-time decision systems: demand forecasting and supply balancing, order-to-courier assignment, and dynamic pay and fee pricing. All running as low latency production services at marketplace scale.
• Understand and shape courier behaviour: lead incentive and pay design grounded in economics and causal modelling, anticipating how couriers respond to the levers we pull
• Set the Operations Research agenda: combinatorial optimisation, exact and heuristic solvers, and simulation for capacity planning and policy testing
• Set the bar for validation before launch: backtesting and simulation frameworks that gate models going into production
• Own the quality of the ML platform and MLOps standards: feature and model pipelines, CI/CD, online and batch serving, monitoring and drift detection
• Drive experimentation and causal inference in a marketplace, including switchback and geo-based designs where network effects break standard A/B tests, and connect short-term experiment results to long-term outcomes such as courier retention and network health
• Build applied AI that delivers value in production, including LLM-based and agentic products for couriers and operations
• Build the organisation: hire, develop managers and principals, and build university partnerships
• Partner with Logistics Product, Logistics Engineering, Commercial and central Technology on production delivery of dispatch, estimations, pay, and supply/demand shaping actions, aligning on priorities and outcomes

What will you bring to the team?

• Leadership experience in Data Science, ML or Operations Research, including significant experience leading large organisations through managers across time zones, and developing those managers
• Deep credibility in real-time ML and marketplace or network optimisation (logistics, ride-hailing, delivery or similar)
• Experience taking models from research into low-latency production at scale
• Strong grounding in experimentation and causal inference under network effects, and in the economics of multi-sided marketplaces where participants respond strategically
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication, able to influence at the Product and Engineering leadership table and translate technical choices into business outcomes
• A pragmatic approach to AI: you ship value, not demos
• Advanced degree in a quantitative field (or equivalent experience)

At JET, this is how we play

Our teams forge connections internally and work with some of the best-known brands on the planet, giving us truly international impact in a dynamic environment. Being the best at what we do isn't just about delivering on our strategy. It's a competition for something incredibly valuable - our customers' choice. Every time a customer decides where to order, they're picking a side. At the heart of the JET Customer League are our values and behaviours. They guide every interaction, every decision, every innovation. These are the actions we need to perform consistently and brilliantly, to surpass the competition and earn our customers' loyalty, again and again. Fun, fast-paced and supportive, the JET culture is about movement, growth, helping one another to succeed and celebrating wins. By truly living our values and embodying our behaviours, we're building a customer-first culture which enables us to stay one step ahead of the competition.

What else are we delivering? Want to know more about our JETers, culture or company? Have a look at our career site where you can find people's stories, blogs, podcasts and more JET journeys.

Inclusion, Diversity & Belonging

No matter who you are, what you look like, who you love, or where you are from, you can find your place at Just Eat Takeaway.com. We're committed to creating an inclusive culture, encouraging diversity of people and thinking, in which all employees feel they truly belong and can bring their most colourful selves to work every day.