Senior Staff Data Scientist

Ritchie Bros.; Westchester (IL); On-site; USD 150,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

401(k) plan

15 days PTO

Job summary

Ritchie Bros. is looking for a Senior Staff Engineer — Data Science based in Westchester, Illinois. This role will lead technical initiatives in machine learning and advanced analytics, architecting sophisticated ML systems across the organization. Candidates should have over 8 years of experience in deploying production ML applications, a strong proficiency in Python and SQL, and a proven track record of mentoring teams. Benefits include competitive medical insurance and a 401(k) plan with a match.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience building and deploying production ML systems.
• Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL.
• Strong experience in Natural Language Processing and computer vision applications.
• Hands-on experience with feature engineering and model training.
• Strong statistical foundation and understanding of core ML algorithms.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical roadmap for data science and ML initiatives.
• Architect and build end-to-end ML systems.
• Develop AI agentic applications and LLM-powered solutions.
• Translate business challenges into technical strategies.
• Mentor and elevate staff and senior data scientists.

Skills

Machine Learning

Data Science

Python

SQL

Natural Language Processing

Computer Vision

AI Applications

Tools

scikit-learn

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Spark

AWS

Job description

About the Role

The Senior Staff Engineer — Data Science will serve as a technical leader in advancing IAA’s Machine Learning (ML) and advanced analytics capabilities. This role involves architecting and building sophisticated ML systems, including supervised, unsupervised, and deep learning models, as well as AI agentic applications, with a strong business orientation and a proven track record of delivering high-impact, data‑driven solutions at scale. The Senior Staff Engineer will drive the technical vision for machine learning across the organization, implementing scalable solutions that deliver measurable growth and operational efficiency.

Working closely with cross‑functional teams within the IAA ecosystem, the Senior Staff Engineer will lead the integration of ML and AI solutions into enterprise‑scale services. This role requires deep expertise in data best practices and system design to ensure the most appropriate data sources, architectures, and approaches are leveraged to solve complex business problems across customer behavior, vehicle listings, and other business‑critical domains.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the technical roadmap for data science and ML initiatives across the organization
• Architect and build end‑to‑end ML systems, from problem framing and data strategy through model development, deployment, and monitoring at scale
• Design and build advanced supervised, unsupervised, and deep learning models, including NLP and computer vision solutions, to solve high‑impact business problems
• Develop AI agentic applications and LLM‑powered solutions to automate workflows and unlock new capabilities
• Perform feature engineering, data validation, and quality assurance across large, complex datasets
• Partner with data engineering, ML platform, and software engineering teams to productionize models and ensure scalability, reliability, and monitoring
• Translate ambiguous, cross‑functional business challenges into well‑scoped technical strategies and communicate findings to executive and non‑technical stakeholders
• Mentor and elevate staff and senior data scientists, and establish best practices, standards, and technical direction across the data science team

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience building and deploying production machine learning systems, including supervised, unsupervised, and deep learning approaches
• Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL, with deep experience in ML libraries such as scikit‑learn, PyTorch or TensorFlow, pandas, and NumPy
• Strong hands‑on experience in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and computer vision applications
• Hands‑on experience building AI agentic applications using LangChain, LangGraph, or similar frameworks, including integration with LLMs and external tools/APIs
• Hands‑on experience with the full ML lifecycle: feature engineering, model training, hyperparameter tuning, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring
• Strong foundation in statistics and core ML algorithms (gradient boosting, neural networks, clustering, dimensionality reduction)
• Experience architecting ML solutions on large‑scale datasets using distributed computing frameworks (Spark, Dask) and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction, influence cross‑functional roadmaps, and communicate complex technical strategies to executive stakeholders
• Track record of mentoring senior data scientists and raising the technical bar across a data science organization

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Model Context Protocol (MCP) for building interoperable AI agent integrations across tools, data sources, and enterprise systems
• Experience designing and orchestrating multi‑agent AI systems, including tool‑use agents, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, and autonomous decision‑making workflows
• Familiarity with Large Language Models (LLMs), prompt engineering, and Generative AI techniques
• Experience with MLOps practices and CI/CD pipelines for machine learning workflows
• Experience with real‑time inference systems and low‑latency model serving
• Contributions to open‑source projects

Benefits

Employees receive medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurances. Participants can enroll in the company’s 401(k) plan and receive a 100% match for the first 4% contributed. All full‑time employees receive 15 days of PTO each year.