Director, Data Science - Agent-Led Engagement in Conversational Commerce

Wal-Mart•Bentonville, AR

46d•$130,000 - $338,000

About The Position

Walmart's Next Gen Commerce team is redefining how customers shop by building intelligent, conversational agents that go beyond answering questions, they initiate value-driven conversations. As Director of Data Science for Agent-Led Engagement in Conversational Commerce, you will lead a core pillar under the Senior Director of Data Science - Agentic AI for Conversational Commerce. Your mission is to develop models that help the agent identify high-value moments to engage, suggest new topics, and continue conversations in meaningful, personalized ways. These proactive behaviors will be grounded in a deep understanding of each customer, drawing from both traditional digital signals (clicks, searches, orders) and conversational context. You will lead a team that builds decision systems combining traditional machine learning with large language models (LLMs). Your approach will include modeling short-term context from active conversations and maintaining long-term customer memory based on evolving profile attributes. Designing how this long-term memory is built, stored, and updated is critical to delivering truly personalized, proactive conversations. This is a hands-on leadership role. You will work closely with engineering, product, and experience teams to move fast, deliver with precision, and ensure technical solutions translate to measurable customer impact. Success in this role requires strong judgment, a bias for action, and the ability to work efficiently across functions in a highly iterative environment.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in data science or applied machine learning
5+ years leading teams developing ML-powered customer engagement or personalization systems
Deep knowledge of large language models (LLMs) and their use in dialogue, decisioning, and personalization
Experience combining LLMs with traditional ML approaches for behavioral modeling or targeting
Expertise in building user profiles from structured and unstructured data, and using them for recommendation or ranking
Proven ability to build systems that personalize interactions based on customer history and real-time signals
Strong communication skills, with the ability to drive clarity across engineering, product, and experience teams

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field
Experience in conversational commerce, personalized assistants, or task-oriented dialog systems
Familiarity with long-context LLM applications, memory architectures, and personalization infrastructure
Knowledge of reinforcement learning or contextual bandits applied to engagement optimization
Demonstrated ability to launch ML-powered product features that improved engagement, retention, or satisfaction

Responsibilities

Lead and grow a team of applied scientists focused on proactive engagement within the conversational agent
Develop models that identify opportunities to initiate or extend conversations based on user behavior and intent
Build systems to suggest relevant topics, journeys, or actions, grounded in customer history and ongoing conversation
Combine LLMs with traditional ML to model both short-term context and long-term memory for personalization
Define strategies for building, storing, and evolving customer profiles as persistent memory for LLM-based decisioning
Partner with product and UX teams to surface proactive suggestions in a natural, timely way during conversations
Establish and track metrics for engagement, relevance, and long-term customer impact
Align with other data science pillars to ensure consistency in agent behavior, quality, and personalization

Benefits

Beyond our great compensation package, you can receive incentive awards for your performance.
Other great perks include 401(k) match, stock purchase plan, paid maternity and parental leave, PTO, multiple health plans, and much more.
Health benefits include medical, vision and dental coverage.
Financial benefits include 401(k), stock purchase and company-paid life insurance.
Paid time off benefits include PTO (including sick leave), parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting.
Other benefits include short-term and long-term disability, company discounts, Military Leave Pay, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, and more.
You will also receive PTO and/or PPTO that can be used for vacation, sick leave, holidays, or other purposes.
The amount you receive depends on your job classification and length of employment.
It will meet or exceed the requirements of paid sick leave laws, where applicable.
Live Better U is a Walmart-paid education benefit program for full-time and part-time associates in Walmart and Sam's Club facilities.
Programs range from high school completion to bachelor's degrees, including English Language Learning and short-form certificates.
Tuition, books, and fees are completely paid for by Walmart.