Staff Data Scientist, Optimization

Firestorm•San Diego, CA

5d•$175,000 - $220,000•Onsite

About The Position

Firestorm builds uncrewed aircraft and the manufacturing network that produces them: full-capability plants, deployable xCell edge factories, and forward-deployed sites that stand up production near the point of need. Crucible is the software that runs that network. It plans and executes production across factories that don't look alike, using supply that isn't guaranteed to arrive. It has to answer practical questions: what should we build, where should we build it, what constrains the plan, and what changes when material, capacity, or demand moves. Many of those are optimization problems. The answer has to account for production capacity, inventory, sourcing, lead times, transportation, and incomplete information. It also has to solve quickly enough to be useful and explain why it produced the plan it did. We are hiring a Staff Data Scientist to own the optimization and decision science behind Crucible. As the first dedicated data scientist on the team, you'll set the technical direction for how Crucible models and solves planning problems, while staying hands-on building the models that ship in the product. You'll work directly with the Crucible software team and with manufacturing, supply chain, and product as we grow both the platform and the science behind it.

Requirements

U.S. Citizenship and ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance
8+ years (or 6+ w/ PhD) building optimization, operations research, or data science solutions for complex operational problems
Demonstrated technical leadership on ambiguous problems, including setting modeling direction and influencing product or engineering decisions
Strong background in mathematical optimization, including linear or mixed-integer programming, network optimization, scheduling, or related methods
Hands-on experience with optimization tools such as Gurobi, CPLEX, OR-Tools, Pyomo, or equivalent
Strong Python and SQL, with experience writing code that is tested, maintained, and used in production
Strong statistical fundamentals and experience working with incomplete, noisy, or uncertain data
Demonstrated ability to take an ambiguous operational problem from formulation through validation and deployment
Strong written and verbal communication across technical and operational teams
Willingness to spend real time with the people using the models you build
U.S. person status (ITAR)

Nice To Haves

MS or PhD in Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field
Experience with production planning, supply chain, logistics, inventory optimization, or manufacturing systems
Experience with simulation, stochastic optimization, robust optimization, or decomposition methods
Aerospace, defense, UAS, automotive, or other complex manufacturing experience

Responsibilities

Own Crucible's optimization models — Formulate and solve problems across production planning, allocation, sourcing, inventory, scheduling, and manufacturing network optimization.
Choose the right approach — Use mathematical optimization, heuristics, simulation, statistics, or simpler methods based on the problem and the decisions the user needs to make.
Build models that work in production — Prototype against real data, establish baselines, test solution quality and performance, and work with software engineers to ship models inside Crucible.
Model real-world uncertainty — Account for incomplete data, changing demand, variable lead times, supplier performance, and other conditions that make a mathematically perfect plan operationally wrong.
Work directly with users — Spend time with manufacturing, supply chain, and program teams to understand how decisions are actually made and translate those constraints into the product.
Set the direction for decision science — Establish how Crucible formulates problems, evaluates model quality, explains recommendations, and determines when additional model complexity is actually worthwhile.
Build the foundation for the team — Establish the tools, methods, and technical standards that future data scientists will build on and raise the modeling fluency of the broader Crucible team.

Benefits

Comprehensive medical, dental, and visions plans
401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
Equity grants for new hires
Unlimited PTO
Extremely generous company holiday calendar, including a holiday hiatus in July & December.
Generous Parental Leave
Lifestyle Spending Account
FSA
DCFSA
HSA
Hospital Indemnity insurance
Critical Illness insurance
Accident insurance
Basic Life/AD&D, short-term and long-term disability insurance, 100% covered by Firestorm. Plus, the option to purchase additional life insurance for you and your family.
Mental Health Resources: We provide free mental health resources 24/7 including therapy and more. Additional work-life services, such as free legal and financial support, are available to you as well.