Principal Data Scientist

Jobtailor; California (MO); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor is seeking a seasoned Lead Applied Scientist to steer a team delivering GenAI-powered solutions across merchandising, supply chain, and store operations. You will guide model design, evaluation, and agent orchestration while shaping technical strategy and delivery velocity.

You will collaborate with product and engineering to translate ambiguous business problems into scalable ML systems, mentor peers, and drive high-impact AI initiatives in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of Applied Scientist/ML engineer experience with production-scale ML models.
• Strong fundamentals in ML/AI, including supervised and deep learning, time-series, causal analysis.
• Hands-on GenAI with LLMs, fine-tuning, evaluations, and agent orchestration.
• Proficient in production-grade Python and distributed systems.
• Experience with large-scale data systems and cloud platforms (GCP/Azure).
• Leadership in mentoring teams and aligning technical work to business goals.
• Drug-free workplace policy compliance.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of applied scientists developing AI-driven solutions.
• Build and ship GenAI applications using agentic frameworks.
• Automate merchant and operator workflows.
• Design and deploy models and agents to investigate anomalies across merchandising, supply chain, and store operations
• Surface the causes behind business signals
• Research and integrate techniques across LLMs, agents, retrieval, and classical ML
• Mentor scientists and engineers and set the team's technical bar
• Partner with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to translate ambiguous problems into high-impact AI solutions

Skills

GenAI applications development

Machine Learning fundamentals

Distributed systems

Production-grade Python

Leadership & mentoring

Cloud platforms experience

Education

Bachelor's degree in a specified or related field; or Master's degree in a specified or related field

Tools

GCP

Azure

Spark

Hive

Job description

• Lead a team of applied scientists developing AI-driven solutions
• Build and ship GenAI applications using agentic frameworks
• Automate merchant and operator workflows
• Design and deploy models and agents to investigate anomalies across merchandising, supply chain, and store operations
• Surface the causes behind business signals
• Research and integrate techniques across LLMs, agents, retrieval, and classical machine learning
• Mentor scientists and engineers and set the team's technical bar
• Partner with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to translate ambiguous problems into high-impact AI solutions

Requirements

• 7+ years of Applied Scientist / MLE experience with a strong track record of shipping ML models to production in high-scale environments
• Deep core ML/AI fundamentals, including supervised learning, deep learning, time-series, and causal/RCA
• Hands-on GenAI experience with LLMs, fine-tuning, evaluations, and agent orchestration
• Production-grade Python
• Distributed systems
• ML pipelines
• CI/CD for ML
• Model monitoring
• Experience with large-scale data systems such as Spark/Hive
• Experience with cloud platforms such as GCP/Azure
• Leadership in mentoring teams and guiding technical development aligned with business objectives
• Bachelor's degree in a specified or related field and 5 years' analytics experience; or Master's degree in a specified or related field and 3 years' analytics experience; or 7 years' experience in an analytics or related field
• Drug-free workplace policy compliance

Core Competencies

Demonstrates expertise in developing AI-driven solutions, with a strong focus on GenAI applications, machine learning fundamentals, and leadership in mentoring teams. Proficient in deploying models and automating workflows to enhance business operations and decision-making.

Highest-signal resume keywords

• Applied Scientist Experience
• GenAI Applications Development
• Machine Learning Fundamentals
• Production-Grade Python
• Cloud Platforms Experience

Hard Skills

• Machine Learning
• Deep Learning
• Supervised Learning
• Time-Series Analysis
• Causal Analysis
• Model Monitoring
• ML Pipelines
• CI/CD for ML
• Agent Orchestration
• Anomaly Detection

Soft Skills

• Mentoring
• Leadership
• Collaboration
• Problem-Solving

Industry Keywords

• AI Solutions
• High-Scale Environments
• Business Signals
• Analytics Experience
• Drug-Free Workplace Policy

Tools & Technologies

• GCP
• Azure
• Spark
• Hive
• Distributed Systems