Senior Data Scientist - Demand Forecasting

About us:

Target is an iconic brand, a Fortune 50 company, and one of America's leading retailers. Target as a tech and data company? Absolutely! We're the behind-the-scenes powerhouse that fuels Target's passion and commitment to cutting-edge innovation. Target's Tech and Data Sciences teams are on a mission to offer the systems, tools, and support that guests and team members need and deserve. Our high-performing teams balance independence with collaboration and we pride ourselves on being versatile, agile, and creative. We drive industry-leading technologies in support of every angle of the business and help ensure that Target operates smoothly, securely, and reliably from the inside out.

About the role:

As a Senior Data Scientist on the Demand Forecasting team with Target Data Sciences, you'll develop models and algorithms for our retail business. You'll work closely with partner team data scientists and Merch business partners to continuously learn more about our business and particularly develop an understanding of the various processes we have in play. You will partner with ML Engineers and Applied Scientists on our partner teams to build solutions for business needs including development, deployment, and maintenance of algorithms and models at scale.

Our team oversees the creation and development of the Demand Forecasting quantitative platform, building the key components which allow us to evaluate the demand and prices of our products and proprietary 'new ventures' products. We aim to develop these tools to be more efficient and precise - while also making them directly available to our business team users, allowing us to quickly respond to our Guest/Customer needs in stores and online.

In this role at Target as a Senior Data Scientist, you'll:

• Change the way demand forecasting and pricing is originated in retail in Target Data Sciences
• Create our next generation demand and pricing platform at scale
• Write code for math/stats models to evaluate demand for millions of items and compute prices
• Partner with business users and other scientists / engineers to build a framework allowing us to develop a new platform to more efficiently estimate demand and price on the fly
• Impact our business by improving our ability to serve our Guests and by directly reducing compute cost through more efficient algorithms
• Coordinate the analysis, troubleshooting, and resolution of issues in our software and the broader infrastructure

What we're looking for:

• MS / PhD in Mathematics, Statistics, Operations Research, Economics, Physics, Computer Science or in a related quantitative industry experience
• 2+ years of experience in building time series forecasting models, ML models, pricing models or optimization algorithms
• Proficient in one or more of Python, Java, Scala or equivalent programming language
• Demonstrated understanding of data structures and algorithms
• Knowledge of linear algebra, statistics, information theory or related mathematical domains
• Understand deep learning, dynamic programming, reinforcement learning or related areas
• Ability to test and measure algorithms
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Team player and constant learner mentality

Bonus Points:

• Strong quantitative skills including specific experience with Statistical Inference, Generalized Linear Models, Markov Decision Processes
• Experience working with large event-driven distributed systems and multi-threaded applications.

Why grow your career with Target Data Sciences?

• You will work directly on the data science problems that have the most impact on Target's entire supply chain, forecasting and merchandising teams.
• We value diversity. We believe that diversity and inclusion is of core importance when we try to create positive in-store experiences for our guests, and we think it is also critically important when building our teams. Read more about our commitment to diversity and inclusion
• We love open source! Many of our team members contribute to open source communities and get to do it during work time. We try to contribute back to our communities where we can and are grateful to be able to open source some of our own projects!
• We value our team members for who they are, not just what they can get done. We treat our team members like people, not like cogs in a machine. We are parents, hobbyists, enthusiasts, family members, and community members, and can offer flexibility to our team members' schedules and work arrangements so that they can flourish both inside and outside of work.