Lead Data Scientist, Demand Forecasting

Farmer's Fridge Careers; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 160,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) with immediate employer match

Paid time off (vacation, sick leave, &

Paid sabbatical after 5 years

Employee discounts

Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

Job summary

Farmer’s Fridge is seeking a Lead Data Scientist, Demand to own the forecasting models powering our 2,000+ Smart Fridges and retail partners. You’ll maintain and improve production models, extend forecasting to company-wide volume and revenue, and collaborate with data engineering and demand planning to drive value.

The role emphasizes strong Python/SQL skills, time-series ML methods, and a proven track record of delivering measurable business impact in an in-office Chicago setting.

Qualifications

• 4-8 years building and maintaining forecasting or predictive models in production.
• Deep demand forecasting experience: time series, hierarchical, or ML-based methods (gradient boosting, state space, Bayesian, or similar).
• Comfort with count data and intermittent demand (Poisson, negative binomial, or similar).
• Experience correcting for censored demand from stockouts, or a strong grasp of why it matters.
• Strong Python and SQL. Experience with Snowflake or a similar cloud warehouse.

Responsibilities

• Own fridge and retail demand forecasts end to end: data, features, model, validation, and production.
• Build forecasts that maximize contribution margin dollars, not forecast accuracy for its own sake.
• Maintain and improve the models in production today.
• Forecast at the item, location, and day level across 2,000+ fridges and retail partner stores.
• Model the hard parts of fresh food: stockouts, short shelf life, new fridges ramping up, promotions.
• Produce probabilistic forecasts, not just point in time estimates.
• Partner with the forecast outputs the solver needs and measure impact on stocking decisions.
• Build backtesting and monitoring; judge accuracy on business outcomes.
• Run a standing model scorecard with periodic reviews.
• Partner with Data Engineering to run models in production pipelines (Snowflake, dbt, Dagster).
• Explain model expectations to planners and operations; justify decisions.

Skills

Forecasting experience

Python

SQL

Time series

Communication

In-office Chicago

Tools

Snowflake

dbt

Dagster

Job description

Farmer’s Fridge is seeking a Lead Data Scientist, Demand to own the forecasting models powering our 2,000+ Smart Fridges and retail partners. You’ll maintain and improve production models, extend forecasting to company-wide volume and revenue, and collaborate with data engineering and demand planning to drive value.

The role emphasizes strong Python/SQL skills, time-series ML methods, and a proven track record of delivering measurable business impact in an in-office Chicago setting.