Lead Data Scientist: ML, Modeling & Production Pipelines

Target; Topeka (KS); On-site; USD 55,104,000 - 85,411,200; Full time

Job summary

Target is seeking a Lead Data Scientist to advance AI-driven initiatives in Kansas. You will lead projects from problem framing to production deployment, applying ML, NLP, econometrics, and feature engineering to optimize business outcomes.

The role emphasizes collaboration across teams, production-grade code, and mentoring junior members, with a Bachelor's degree and 6+ years of experience in quantitative fields. On-site work in Kansas supports rapid experimentation and scalable solutions.

Qualifications

• 4-year degree in a quantitative field and 6+ years of industry experience or equivalent.
• Graduate degree in a quantitative discipline is optional.
• Experience building predictive, anomaly, or classification models.
• Strong analytical reasoning and problem-solving skills.
• Proficiency in Python, SQL, Hadoop/Hive; experience with Scala, R, or Java desirable.
• Knowledge of statistical concepts, MILP, machine learning models, dimensionality reduction, and time-series analysis.
• Experience on large-scale operations with data-science applications.
• Ability to translate data discoveries into actionable stories.
• Self-driven, results-oriented, able to meet tight deadlines.
• Collaborative, cross-functional working style across geographies and time zones.

Responsibilities

• Engage with cross-functional stakeholders and researchers to address business needs.
• Characterize systems and identify problems to tackle and communicate approaches.
• Apply AI, ML, NLP, or computer vision techniques to real business problems.
• Data acquisition, feature engineering, model training, validation, and deployment to production.
• Drive end-to-end solution development and define metrics for experiments.
• Design and maintain production data pipelines with unit tests and CI/CD.
• Collaborate with architects and data stewards to deliver high-performance models.
• Mentor junior team members and present work to cross-functional teams.

Skills

Statistical modeling

Machine learning

NLP

A/B testing

Feature engineering

Econometrics

Data storytelling

Translating data to actions

Education

Bachelor's degree in a quantitative field

Graduate degree (optional)

Tools

Python

SQL

Hadoop/Hive

Scala

R

Java

Job description

Target is seeking a Lead Data Scientist to advance AI-driven initiatives in Kansas. You will lead projects from problem framing to production deployment, applying ML, NLP, econometrics, and feature engineering to optimize business outcomes.

The role emphasizes collaboration across teams, production-grade code, and mentoring junior members, with a Bachelor's degree and 6+ years of experience in quantitative fields. On-site work in Kansas supports rapid experimentation and scalable solutions.