Sr. Data Scientist

ruelala; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 145,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

Flexible remote/hybrid work options

Volunteer opportunities

DEI celebrations

Job summary

Rue Gilt Groupe in New York or Boston is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to build and ship personalization systems powering Rue La La, Gilt, and ShopSimon. You will own products end to end—from problem framing and metrics to feature engineering, training, real-time serving, and monitoring—for 50M+ members daily.

The role emphasizes experimentation, production ML, and GenAI use where it helps, with a small senior team and cross-functional partners across engineering, product, and merchandising.

Qualifications

• Contextual bandits, reinforcement learning, or cold-start techniques.
• Embeddings, two-tower or sequence models, and vector search.
• Databricks (MLflow, Unity Catalog, Model Serving) or GCP (Gemini Enterprise Platform).
• Production LLM for inference, RAG, evaluation, or agent tool calling.
• E-commerce, retail, or fashion experience.
• Deriving insights from complex data through analysis and modeling.

Responsibilities

• Personalization at scale: Ranking and recommendation models that power product discovery across boutiques, product pages, and our AI shopping assistant
• Core algorithms: Boutique sort, similar styles, complete the look, and real-time reranking that blends member intent with merchandising goals
• Exploration and learning: Contextual bandits and adaptive strategies that adjust the experience to how each member likes to shop
• Product and model ownership: Shape the roadmap and success metrics with Product, then build the production training and inference pipelines, batch and real-time, with the monitoring and reliability to match
• Experimentation: Design offline evaluation and online A/B tests, and turn results into clear decisions with Product and Merchandising
• GenAI where it helps: Use LLMs and embeddings where they improve recommendations, and expose models as tools the shopping assistant can call
• Cross-functional impact: Partner with engineering, product, marketing, and merchandising teams, and present your work to leadership

Skills

Contextual bandits

Reinforcement learning

Cold-start techniques

Embeddings

Two-tower models

Vector search

Databricks MLflow

Unity Catalog

Model Serving

Production LLM

RAG

E-commerce experience

Data analysis and modeling

Tools

Databricks

Python

SQL

Spark

PyTorch

GCP Gemini Enterprise Platform

AWS

Job description

Title of role: Senior Data Scientist

Location: New York or Boston; Hybrid (2 days in the office required)

Approved Salary Range: 145k- 150k

About the Role

Rue Gilt Groupe is hiring a Senior Data Scientist to build and ship the personalization systems behind Rue La La, Gilt, and ShopSimon. You will own products end to end, not just the models behind them: from problem framing and success metrics through feature engineering, training, real-time serving, and monitoring, and see your work reach 50M+ members every day.

Flash sale off-price is one of the hardest settings in e-commerce for recommendations. Inventory is limited and short-lived, new products and boutiques launch daily, and cold start is the norm, not the edge case. If that sounds like a fun problem, we would like to talk.

Key Responsibilities

• Personalization at scale: Ranking and recommendation models that power product discovery across boutiques, product pages, and our AI shopping assistant
• Core algorithms: Boutique sort, similar styles, complete the look, and real-time reranking that blends member intent with merchandising goals
• Exploration and learning: Contextual bandits and adaptive strategies that adjust the experience to how each member likes to shop
• Product and model ownership: Shape the roadmap and success metrics with Product, then build the production training and inference pipelines, batch and real-time, with the monitoring and reliability to match
• Experimentation: Design offline evaluation and online A/B tests, and turn results into clear decisions with Product and Merchandising
• GenAI where it helps: Use LLMs and embeddings where they improve recommendations, and expose models as tools the shopping assistant can call
• Cross-functional impact: Partner with engineering, product, marketing, and merchandising teams, and present your work to leadership

Experience and Background Needed

• Contextual bandits, reinforcement learning, or cold-start techniques
• Embeddings, two-tower or sequence models, and vector search
• Databricks (MLflow, Unity Catalog, Model Serving) or GCP (Gemini Enterprise Platform)
• Production LLM for inference, RAG, evaluation, or agent tool calling
• E-commerce, retail, or fashion experience
• Deriving insights from complex data through analysis and modeling

Our Stack

• Databricks
• Python
• SQL
• Spark
• PyTorch
• GCP (Gemini Enterprise Platform)
• AWS

About the AI & Data Science Team

We are a small, senior team that owns the product, the science, and the production systems. There is no handoff between deciding what to build, building the model, and shipping it, so you carry your work from idea to launch. You will have the freedom to try new techniques, the data to test them, and a direct line from your work to member experience and revenue.

What Our Team Offers

• Comprehensive Coverage: Robust health, dental, and vision insurance effective on the date of hire.
• Time & Flexibility: Generous Flex Time Off (FTO) and flexible remote/hybrid work options that support a healthy work-life balance.
• Culture: A supportive, inclusive culture that encourages innovation, safety, and creative risk-taking.
• Community: Paid volunteer opportunities and regular DEI celebrations to foster a strong sense of community and collaboration.
• Impact: The chance to make a real, measurable impact at a mission-driven, fast-growing company poised for major expansion.

We celebrate diverse perspectives and strive to create an inclusive environment for all our Associates.

Work Authorization

Rue Gilt Groupe requires all applicants to be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship now or in the future . Rue Gilt Groupe is an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status.

Rue Gilt Groupe is committed to providing Associates with equal pay for equal work and carefully considers a wide range of compensation factors, including but not limited to, prior experience, education, certification(s), license(s), skills and expertise, location, internal equity, and other factors that are job related and consistent with business need. Our goal is to support, reward and compensate the entire individual. Depending on role eligibility, your offer may also include bonus/commission, stock options, paid time off, medical, dental, vision and basic life insurance. Therefore, final offer amounts may vary from the amount stated.

The above statements are intended to describe