Staff Data Scientist – Optimization & Planning

Firestorm; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 175,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision

401(k)

Equity

Unlimited PTO

Generous holidays

Parental Leave

Life insurance

Job summary

Firestorm is hiring a Staff Data Scientist to own the optimization and decision science behind Crucible, the software driving its manufacturing network. You will define the modeling direction and stay hands-on with production-ready models, working across manufacturing, supply chain, and product to grow both the platform and the science behind it.

You will lead optimization efforts, tackle uncertainty and scale, and partner with engineers to ship high-impact models that guide critical production

Qualifications

• U.S. Citizenship and ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance
• 8+ years (or 6+ w/ PhD) building optimization, operations research, or data science solutions for complex operational problems
• Demonstrated technical leadership on ambiguous problems, including setting modeling direction and influencing product or engineering decisions
• Strong background in mathematical optimization, including linear or mixed-integer programming, network optimization, scheduling, or related methods
• Hands‑on experience with optimization tools such as Gurobi, CPLEX, OR-Tools, Pyomo, or equivalent
• Strong Python and SQL, with experience writing code that is tested, maintained, and used in production
• Strong statistical fundamentals and experience working with incomplete, noisy, or uncertain data
• Demonstrated ability to take an ambiguous operational problem from formulation through validation and deployment
• Strong written and verbal communication across technical and operational teams
• Willingness to spend real time with the people using the models you build
• U.S. person status (ITAR)

Responsibilities

• Own Crucible's optimization models — Formulate and solve problems across production planning, allocation, sourcing, inventory, scheduling, and manufacturing network optimization.
• Choose the right approach — Use mathematical optimization, heuristics, simulation, statistics, or simpler methods based on the problem and the decisions the user needs to make.
• Build models that work in production — Prototype against real data, establish baselines, test solution quality and performance, and work with software engineers to ship models inside Crucible.
• Model real-world uncertainty — Account for incomplete data, changing demand, variable lead times, supplier performance, and other conditions that make a mathematically perfect plan operationally wrong.
• Work directly with users — Spend time with manufacturing, supply chain, and program teams to understand how decisions are actually made and translate those constraints into the product.
• Set the direction for decision science — Establish how Crucible formulates problems, evaluates model quality, explains recommendations, and determines when additional model complexity is actually worthwhile.
• Build the foundation for the team — Establish the tools, methods, and technical standards that future data scientists will build on and raise the modeling fluency of the broader Crucible team.

Skills

Optimization

Leadership

Python

SQL

Statistics

Education

MS or PhD in OR/IE/Applied Math/CS

Tools

Gurobi

CPLEX

OR-Tools

Pyomo

Job description

Firestorm is hiring a Staff Data Scientist to own the optimization and decision science behind Crucible, the software driving its manufacturing network. You will define the modeling direction and stay hands-on with production-ready models, working across manufacturing, supply chain, and product to grow both the platform and the science behind it.

You will lead optimization efforts, tackle uncertainty and scale, and partner with engineers to ship high-impact models that guide critical production