Lead Data Scientist - Search and Ranking (NLP, LLMs, ML Ops)

Target•Sunnyvale, CA

4d•$128,000 - $277,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Working at Target means helping all families discover the joy of everyday life. We bring that vision to life through our values and culture. Learn more about Target here . A role with Target Data Sciences means the chance to help develop and manage state of the art predictive algorithms that use data at scale to automate and optimize decisions at scale. Whether you join our Statistics, Optimization or Machine Learning teams, you’ll be challenged to harness Target’s impressive data breadth to build the algorithms that power solutions our partners in Marketing, Supply Chain, Forecasting, Search and Personalization rely on. Every Scientist on Target’s Data Sciences team can expect modeling and data science, software/product development of highly performant code for model performance, and to elevate Target’s culture and apply retail domain knowledge. The Search and Browse Applied Data Science team builds the core relevance engine and Data Science products that power Target’s Digital experience. As a Lead Data Scientist on this product – you’ll work with business partners to provide solutions for business problems in a fast-paced and global environment. You’ll have the opportunity to design quality, flexible and performant Data Science systems and services at scale. You’ll also architect Data Science solutions that capture, process and mine huge datasets in the retail industry. We’ll also promote innovative thinking as well as the opportunity to use cutting-edge machine learning algorithms and NLP techniques to improve our Mobile and Web Search systems!

Requirements

4-year degree in Quantitative disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) or equivalent experience
PhD or MS in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Physics or equivalent work or industry experience
Research or industry experiences in search indexing, information retrieval or ranking
Demonstrated experience in NLP, LLMs, agentic systems or recommendation systems at scale
5+ years of experience in deploying machine learning algorithms into production environments with good ML Ops experience
Proficient in Python or Java with excellent coding and problem-solving skills
Exceptional hands-on modeling skills using Python
Extensive experience implementing and integrating ML models in production in high traffic/scale
Experience querying large databases with SQL, HQL, or some variation
Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills for partnering with global teams
Has a strong growth mindset and ownership mentality

Responsibilities

Develop and deploy scalable deep learning models to improve the search experience of guests
Use LLM and agentic technologies to improve ecommerce search experience
Architect and implement large-scale AI systems using test-driven development practices
Build NLP technology for query and document analysis, processing, and understanding
Create data pipelines for feature/label extraction and generation
Conduct data analysis to identify opportunities and improve models
Conduct research to advance the state-of-the-art ML, LLM, and NLP technologies
Contributing to the operations/building of AI pipelines
Adopting Target's infrastructural platforms and operationalize tools and systems around them
Mentor and partner with other engineers to develop software that meets business needs
Collaborate effectively with product and business partners to define and scope solutions
Follow agile methodology for software development and technical documentation
Innovate constantly and keep systems up to date with current technologies

Benefits

comprehensive health benefits and programs, which may include medical, vision, dental, life insurance and more
401(k)
employee discount
short term disability
long term disability
paid sick leave
paid national holidays
paid vacation

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