Senior Data Scientist

About Optoro:

Optoro is a fast-growing technology company that is revolutionizing retail. Every year, more than 15% of retail goods are returned or simply never sell. This creates tons of unnecessary waste and costs retailers billions.

Our mission is to eliminate all waste from returns. Our technology platform connects every returned item to its best home, thereby increasing profitability for retailers, giving consumers great deals, and reducing environmental waste. Backed by some of the top investors in the country - including Kleiner Perkins, Revolution Growth, and UPS - Optoro is powered by its collaborative, unconventional, and resourceful employees who love solving big problems. We are looking for individuals with similar creativity and energy to help build a lasting company focused on the triple bottom line.

The Job

At Optoro, data science lies at the heart of our ability to execute our mission and deliver value to our customers. The Data Science team is responsible for developing machine learning algorithms that transform our vast data into product intelligence. Applications of machine learning within our product line range from dynamic pricing algorithms to real-time dispositioning decisions to warehouse operations optimization, and much more. 

As a Senior Data Scientist, your mission will be to turn our massive data resources into machine learning and intelligent algorithms that inform our products and business processes. You will be expected to develop algorithms and bring that to life in our product. To achieve this, you will work with both the data science team and the analytics team in order to train, monitor, and deploy machine learning models at-scale.  Our teams value creativity, willingness to embrace new methods and technology, and the ability to solve problems independently.

Responsibilities

To be successful in this role, the candidate will

• Take broad, open-ended questions and identify clear steps for how to break them down into machine learning based projects
• Independently develop predictive models via supervised and unsupervised machine learning, statistical analysis, and other predictive modeling techniques 
• Manipulate complex, high-volume, high-dimensionality data from a variety of source to provide insights that inform the design of machine learning solutions
• Establish scalable, efficient, automated processes for wide-reaching data systems, including model development, validation, and deployment pipelines
• Monitor performance of data science services for accuracy, drift, and robustness to new data
• Design and execute business experiments by leveraging a broad set of testing frameworks, ranging from reinforcement learning to traditional A/B testing
• Manage the full lifecycle of machine learning microservices, including model prototyping, training & evaluation, containerization, unit testing, performance optimization, and deployment in a Kubernetes-based infrastructure
• Communicate complex quantitative analysis in a clear, precise, and actionable manner to diverse stakeholders

Qualifications

Must Have

• Masters degree in a technical/quantitative field with 3+ years of experience in statistical/predictive modeling, or Bachelors degree with 5+ years of experience in statistical/predictive modeling
• Demonstrable experience independently leading predictive modeling and machine learning projects, including writing production grade code within the Python statistical programming stack (NumPy, Scipy, Pandas, Scikit-Learn, TensorFlow, etc)
• Proven competency in taking loosely defined business questions and translating them into testable hypotheses
• Proficiency in using SQL to retrieve, process, and manipulate large data sources
• Track record of effectively presenting and receiving feedback on plans, progress, and results to internal stakeholders
• Extensive experience communicating quantitative concepts to non-quantitative audiences

Nice to Have

• Broad experience ideating on and leading data science problems in the eCommerce, retail, supply chain, or finance industries
• Domain knowledge in risk and/or credit modeling, specifically within the consumer lending industry
• Experience with Airflow, Kafka, and deployment in the Kubernetes environment as well as cloud computing environments (SageMaker on AWS, VertexAI on Google Cloud, Azure, etc)

All new employees at Optoro will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 prior to commencing employment. Employees will be required to produce proof of vaccination status prior to their first day of employment. Optoro will evaluate requests for reasonable accommodations for applicants unable to be vaccinated due to a religious belief or medical circumstance on an individual basis in compliance with applicable laws.

Optoro is an equal opportunity employer.