Lead Data Scientist: Advanced AI & Agentic ML

Target; Brooklyn Park (MN); Hybrid; USD 132,000 - 238,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401(k) plan

Paid time off

Job summary

Target's Advanced AI team builds end-to-end AI/ML systems delivering measurable business value. As Lead Data Scientist, you will identify, design, develop, evaluate, and scale AI/ML capabilities to automate workflows and extract actionable insights.

You will work with AI and Full-Stack Engineers, product partners, platform teams, and business stakeholders to translate ambiguous problems into practical AI/ML solutions, defining success metrics and guiding prototypes to production.

Qualifications

• PhD or MS in CS/ML/AI or related technical field preferred.
• 7+ years of hands-on data science, ML, or AI/ML systems experience.
• Demonstrated experience with LLMs, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, or AI observability.
• Strong Python programming skills with common libraries (Pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Experience deploying AI/ML capabilities into production applications.
• Ability to translate ambiguous business problems into structured data science approaches.
• Excellent communication and mentoring abilities to guide peers and leadership.

Responsibilities

• Identify, design, develop, evaluate, and scale AI/ML capabilities across core business workflows.
• Lead hands-on data science efforts and guide prototypes to production.
• Collaborate with AI Engineers, software engineers, product partners, and stakeholders to translate problems into solutions.

Skills

PhD/MS in CS/ML

Data science leadership

Python (Pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn,Py

LLMs / AI

Model deployment

Mentoring

Effective communication

Education

MS/PhD in CS/ML/AI or related

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

scikit-learn

Job description

Target's Advanced AI team builds end-to-end AI/ML systems delivering measurable business value. As Lead Data Scientist, you will identify, design, develop, evaluate, and scale AI/ML capabilities to automate workflows and extract actionable insights.

You will work with AI and Full-Stack Engineers, product partners, platform teams, and business stakeholders to translate ambiguous problems into practical AI/ML solutions, defining success metrics and guiding prototypes to production.