Director, Data Science

Gopuff

1d•$215,000 - $275,000

About The Position

Gopuff is the go-to instant commerce platform, delivering everyday essentials in minutes. Powered by a network of fulfillment centers and cutting-edge technology, we serve millions of customers across the US and beyond. Data Science sits at the heart of how we delight customers, optimize operations, and grow our advertising business — and we're looking for a leader to push all three forward. As Director of Data Science, you will lead a high-impact team responsible for the models and intelligence that power Gopuff's consumer experience, delivery network, and advertising platform. This is a hands-on leadership role — you'll set technical direction, architect solutions, and write code alongside your team. You'll partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Business leaders to translate complex ML capabilities into measurable business outcomes.

Requirements

8+ years in applied data science or ML, with at least 3 years managing teams of scientists and engineers in a fast-paced tech or e-commerce environment.
Proven experience building and shipping ad ranking or retrieval systems in e-commerce, marketplace, or search contexts — including relevance modeling and multi-objective optimization.
Deep expertise in modern ML architectures: two-tower retrieval, transformers, LLMs, contextual bandits, GNNs, and causal/uplift modeling.
Strong product intuition and business acumen — you can connect model improvements to revenue, NPS, and operational metrics and communicate this clearly to executives.
Hands-on coder: proficient in Python and comfortable diving into model code, experiment pipelines, and production systems.
Experience with large-scale ML infrastructure: familiar with feature stores, model registries, real-time serving, and experimentation platforms.
Track record of building and retaining diverse, high-performing data science teams.

Nice To Haves

Prior leadership at a consumer marketplace, quick-commerce, grocery, or retail media company.
Familiarity with retail media network (RMN) measurement standards and privacy-preserving attribution techniques.
Experience with real-time personalization at scale, including streaming feature pipelines.
Familiarity with Databricks and Snowflake is a plus.
Publications or presentations at NeurIPS, KDD, RecSys, SIGIR, or equivalent.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end data science roadmap across Consumer, Delivery, and Ads — translating business priorities into a coherent ML strategy with clear milestones and measurable ROI.
Provide strong technical direction and mentorship to a team of Data Scientists and ML Engineers; establish best practices for model development, evaluation, and deployment.
Partner with C-suite and senior product leadership to influence product strategy and build organizational confidence in ML-driven decision-making.
Drive a culture of experimentation: define measurement frameworks, champion A/B testing rigor, and hold the team accountable to business impact.
Lead the design and continuous improvement of Gopuff's search ranking and query understanding systems, including semantic search and intent modeling.
Build and scale personalization infrastructure that adapts the customer experience in real time — from homepage carousels to dynamic upsell and cross-sell surfaces.
Develop next-generation recommendation models (collaborative filtering, two-tower retrieval, contextual bandits) that drive basket size and repeat purchase.
Partner with Product to define upsell and nudge strategies grounded in behavioral signals and causal inference.
Work day to day with gopuff engineering teams to bring search and recommendation changes to life
Own the predictive models powering ETA accuracy, dynamic dispatch, and driver routing that underpin Gopuff's speed promise.
Apply ML to optimize zone coverage, demand forecasting, and fleet utilization — directly impacting contribution margin.
Partner with Operations to turn model outputs into actionable tooling for fulfillment center and driver teams.
Architect and own Gopuff's ad ranking stack — query-ad relevance scoring, multi-objective ranking (revenue × customer experience), and auction mechanics.
Build CTR/CVR prediction models and closed-loop attribution pipelines for sponsored product, display, and offsite formats.
Define and improve advertiser-facing ML products: bid optimization, budget pacing, audience targeting, and incrementality measurement.
Collaborate with the Ads Product and Sales teams to grow advertiser ROI while protecting the organic shopping experience.