Lead Data Scientist, Recommendations & Reinforcement Learning

Target; Minneapolis (MN); On-site; USD 132,000 - 238,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401(k) matching

Paid time off

Employee discount

Short/Long term disability

Paid national holidays

Paid vacation

Job summary

Target is seeking a Lead Data Scientist - Recommendations to provide technical leadership for scalable ML systems powering Target's digital recommendations. You will collaborate with data scientists, engineers, product managers, and business stakeholders to enhance guest experiences through ranking, retrieval and personalization across Target's digital touchpoints.

You will mentor other scientists, drive projects from problem definition to production deployment, and help set best practices for

Qualifications

• PhD or MS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Operations Research, or a related quantitative field with 2+ years of industry experience.
• 5+ years of experience developing machine learning solutions scaling recommendation, personalization, ranking, retrieval, or search machine learning systems.
• Experience with reinforcement learning and/or contextual bandit design, implementation, and evaluation.
• Strong programming skills in Python and SQL; experience with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX.
• Experience working with large-scale data processing and analytics platforms such as Spark or equivalent.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, evaluation, and deployment of machine learning models that power Target's digital recommendations and personalization experiences.
• Mentor and develop other scientists, collaborate with data scientists, engineers, product managers, and business stakeholders.
• Drive projects from initial problem definition through production deployment and measurement, balancing innovation with operational excellence.
• Help shape the technical direction of Target's recommendation capabilities and establish best practices for model development, evaluation, and measurement.

Skills

Python

SQL

Communication

Experiment design

Team leadership

Education

MS/PhD in CS/ML/Statistics/Applied Math/OR

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

Spark

Job description

Target is seeking a Lead Data Scientist - Recommendations to provide technical leadership for scalable ML systems powering Target's digital recommendations. You will collaborate with data scientists, engineers, product managers, and business stakeholders to enhance guest experiences through ranking, retrieval and personalization across Target's digital touchpoints.

You will mentor other scientists, drive projects from problem definition to production deployment, and help set best practices for