Data Science (MLOPS) Tech Lead

PepsiCo • Plano, TX

4d • $127,500 - $221,800

About The Position

PepsiCo is seeking a Principal Data Scientist in its Data & Analytics organization to build, scale, and sustain global digital and analytics solutions across the enterprise. The role focuses on complex business problems, digital products, and measurable impact across commercial, supply chain, manufacturing, logistics, sales, finance, and other enterprise domains.

The position is a senior hands-on contributor and technical leader who translates business needs into advanced statistical and machine learning solutions that are production-ready, reliable, reusable, monitorable, and sustainable. The Principal Data Scientist partners with Product, Data Engineering, ML Engineering, IT, and business stakeholders to move solutions from discovery and experimentation into scalable enterprise adoption. The role may evolve to include people management responsibilities as the team expands.

Requirements

• At least 6 years of experience building and delivering analytics, data science, or machine learning solutions in commercial, supply chain, manufacturing, logistics, finance, sales, or related business domains.
• At least 6 years of experience applying statistical and machine learning techniques, including supervised and unsupervised learning, to business problems.
• At least 6 years of hands-on experience using Python or similar programming languages for statistical or machine learning model development.
• At least 6 years of experience with SQL, ETL, data wrangling, and preparing data for analytics or machine learning use cases.
• Experience designing, deploying, monitoring, and sustaining production-level or business-critical machine learning, statistical, analytics, or reporting solutions.
• Experience operationalizing analytical models with engineering teams, including scalability, reliability, refresh cadence, monitoring, support, and model consumption requirements.
• Strong understanding of model lifecycle practices, including experimentation, reproducible development, model validation, testing, documentation, version control, and performance tracking.
• At least 4 years of experience developing and delivering solutions using cloud-based data or compute platforms for scalable model training, scoring, monitoring, or consumption.
• Experience with enterprise-grade analytics platforms such as Databricks, Azure-based data platforms, or similar scalable cloud environments.
• Experience with Agile delivery methodologies, analytics product development, and modern engineering practices such as Git.
• Strong communication, stakeholder management, and organizational skills, including the ability to manage ambiguity, balance priorities, and translate technical concepts into business-consumable insights.
• Technical leadership and the ability to influence Data Science, Product, Data Engineering, ML Engineering, IT, and business teams.
• A product and engineering mindset with attention to reliability, observability, reuse, maintainability, and business adoption.
• Strong judgment in balancing modeling sophistication with practical deployment and support needs.
• A disciplined approach to documentation, reproducibility, testing, knowledge transfer, and measurable business impact.
• A creative, collaborative, and adaptable working style in ambiguous, matrixed, and fast-moving environments.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in CPG, retail, supply chain, manufacturing, logistics, or commercial analytics environments.
• Experience with visualization tools, business storytelling, and executive-ready communication of analytical insights.
• Experience with advanced methods such as deep learning, reinforcement learning, simulation, optimization, Bayesian methods, causal inference, NLP, Responsible AI, or distributed machine learning.
• Experience with CI/CD, Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, automated testing, pipeline orchestration, model registries, feature reuse, deployment workflows, or model monitoring frameworks.
• Experience mentoring data scientists, leading technical teams, or preparing for people leadership responsibilities.

Responsibilities

• Lead complex data science initiatives from discovery through model development, deployment, monitoring, and sustained business use.
• Translate business problems into modeling, experimentation, simulation, optimization, and machine learning approaches that can be adopted at scale.
• Design analytical solutions that are explainable, reusable, reliable, observable, and supportable in enterprise environments.
• Partner with Product Managers, Product Owners, Data Engineering, ML Engineering, IT, and business stakeholders to define requirements, shape roadmaps, and deliver business-ready analytics products.
• Work with engineering teams to industrialize models into production-ready components, services, workflows, scheduled scoring processes, and reusable patterns.
• Define success metrics, KPIs, model health measures, data quality checks, and business outcome metrics to evaluate post-deployment performance and impact.
• Research and apply appropriate emerging methods in machine learning, AI, statistics, optimization, and advanced analytics.
• Create reusable packages, libraries, documentation, best practices, and knowledge-transfer materials for the broader Data Science community.
• Provide technical leadership, coaching, and guidance to Data Scientists, ML Engineers, and cross-functional partners.
• Help shape a collaborative culture focused on innovation, productization, reliability, reproducibility, and measurable business impact.

Benefits

• Performance-based annual bonus with an eligibility target payout of 12% of annual salary.
• Paid time off subject to eligibility, including paid parental leave, vacation, sick, and bereavement leave.
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage, subject to elections and eligibility.
• Disability coverage, subject to elections and eligibility.
• Health and dependent care reimbursement accounts, subject to elections and eligibility.
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
• Accident, group legal, and life insurance, subject to elections and eligibility.
• Defined Contribution Retirement Plan.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed