Lead Data Scientist, Relevancy Sciences Data Science & Research – Personalization & Loyalty Strategy (P3764)

Relevancy Sciences Team is responsible for powering relevant, personalized, and scalable customer experiences across Kroger’s e-commerce ecosystem. We build and evolve the science behind search and recommendations that serve millions of customers and support high-scale digital experiences.

We are seeking a Lead Data Scientist to provide technical leadership across search and recommender systems, with a strong focus on modern model architectures, and production-ready machine learning. This role is ideal for someone who combines depth in applied machine learning with strong systems thinking, cross-functional influence, and contributes towards agentic capabilities.

What does the role entail? (Responsibilities)

Technical Leadership, Ownership, and Influence. Own and drive technical initiatives across search & recommender systems. Define and evolve the science strategy for improving content discovery, relevance, personalization, and decision support across digital experiences. Identify high-impact opportunities, make clear technical tradeoffs, and guide the team towards scalable, practical solutions. Rapidly prototype and validate new ideas to accelerate adoption and demonstrate measurable value.

Develop innovative search & recommender systems. Design and build ML solutions tailored to the unique needs of grocery retail domain. Lead the development of systems that improve product discovery and personalization across customer journeys. Bring strong technical and thought leadership on next generation personalization, including the use of Generative AI and agent-based approaches.

Evaluate and improve ML performance. Establish rigorous evaluation methodologies to assess the performance of ML systems across key metrics. Define robust online evaluation frameworks, and guide experimentation strategies that connect model improvements to customer and business outcomes.

Model serving and deployment. Partner closely with Engineering to build and deploy production-ready ML systems. Influence design decisions related to real-time inference, feature access, system integration, monitoring, and reliability. Ensure solutions meet latency, scalability, and operational requirements. Contribute to the evolution of serving and deployment strategies.

Cross-functional leadership. Work closely with Product, Engineering, and business stakeholders to translate needs into clear problem statements, hypotheses, and execution plans. Drive alignment across teams and influence decisions through clear communication of tradeoffs, risks, and expected outcomes.

Mentoring and knowledge sharing. Mentor data scientists and lead technical reviews to improve model quality, experimentation rigor, and systems thinking. Promote best practices in reproducibility and evaluation. Contribute to building a strong, learning-oriented team culture.

What skills and experience do you need? (Requirements)

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related quantitative field.
• 6+ years of experience applying machine learning to real-world problems with strong experience in search and recommender systems. Strong understanding of approaches such as embeddings and multi-stage decision systems.
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL, with experience working on large-scale data using tools such as Spark.
• Experience with modern machine learning and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Strong foundation in statistics, experimentation, and data analysis, including design of experiments and A/B testing.
• Familiarity with large language models, foundation models, and emerging AI capabilities, including where they are applicable and where they are not.
• Experience evaluating or prototyping GenAI-based solutions is preferred.
• Experience partnering with engineering teams to deploy and maintain machine learning systems in production.
• Understanding of real-time systems, model serving, feature pipelines, and monitoring.
• Ability to make practical tradeoffs between model complexity, performance, latency, and scalability.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical work across projects and influence direction across data science, engineering, and product teams.
• Experience mentoring or guiding other data scientists and contributing to a strong technical culture.
• Experience working with cloud platforms such as GCP or Azure.
• Experience in retail, e-commerce, or high-scale consumer domains is a plus.

Why join our team? (Rewards)

Impact millions of people. As a member of our data science team, you will have the opportunity to make a tangible difference in the lives of millions of customers by delivering relevant and personalized recommendations that enhance their grocery shopping experience. Your work will directly contribute to increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty, driving business outcomes for our company.

Continuous learning and development. Challenge yourself. We are committed to fostering a culture of continuous learning and development. You will have access to resources and support for expanding your knowledge and skills in cutting-edge technologies, including recommender systems, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Our team encourages exploration and experimentation, providing opportunities to stay at the forefront of industry advancements.

Work on new developments in recommender systems. Join a team at the forefront of innovation in recommender systems and AI. You will have the chance to contribute to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in personalized recommendation technology. You will have the chance to work on exciting projects that leverage the latest developments in deep learning architectures and data science methodologies.

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Applicants for employment in the US must have work authorization that does not now or in the future require sponsorship of a visa for employment authorization in the United States and with the Kroger Family of Companies (i.e. H1-B visa, F-1 visa (OPT), TN visa or any other non-immigrant status)

You will be joining a team of data scientists operating within the PL&S at 84.51°. Our team partners across multiple portfolios, including Our Brands, Kroger Personal Finance, and the Kroger Enterprise Marketing organization, to support media strategy & execution, targeting, measurement, and enterprise level marketing initiatives.

We work closely with the Our Brands and Kroger Personal Finance teams to plan, execute and measure targeted media and deliver insights that drive growth and efficiency. The team leads the execution of brand loyalty mailers for the Big 3 Our Brands, with a focus on rewarding high‑brand‑loyal households that drive the greatest business value. We also collaborate with Kroger Marketing to execute and measure activations across a range of initiatives, ensuring data driven insights inform business decisions.

Our team is known for being subject matter experts of KPM processes for Kroger Model and owners of a broad set of analytical and external-facing tools. We solve complex client and customer problems by applying the most appropriate statistical and analytic approaches to answer meaningful business questions. In this role, you will be on the front lines supporting Sales and Account Management partners, while also developing deep expertise in retailer data.

You will work hands-on with large-scale retailer databases and leverage the full suite of 84.51° technical and visualization tools, including Python, SQL, Excel, Power BI, and internal platforms, to deliver timely, relevant, and actionable insights. We expect all data scientists on our team to be deeply engaged in advanced analytics and comfortable working directly with data to drive impact.

Responsibilities:  

• Lead end-to-end analytics and data science projects, managing stakeholders and delivering solutions on time, within scope, and to business objectives.
• Develop a strong understanding of the end-to-end CRM (Our Brands Loyalty Mailer) targeting and measurement process to ensure the timely, accurate delivery of mailers and the generation of actionable insights. 
• Apply optimizations and scientific enhancements in targeting to improve customer engagement and maximize ROI.
• Partner closely with Sales and Account Management to own the analytic relationship for OB, driving engagement and shaping analytical offerings through feedback and insight.
• Translate complex first-party data into clear, actionable customer stories and recommendations that inform media strategy, optimization, and business decisions.
• Drive continuous improvement through stronger measurement methodology, increased automation, and clearer data visualization that leads to more actionable insights.
• Attain deep expertise in 84.51° and KPM data assets, measurement techniques, QA processes, and analytic capabilities, confidently applying them to internal and external business needs.
• Collaborate across data science, product, engineering, and capabilities teams to validate new use cases, assess data quality, and support innovation.
• Mentor and support junior data scientists through onboarding, coaching, and knowledge sharing, while championing best practices across the data science community.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience: 

• Bachelor’s degree in statistics, mathematics, business analytics, economics, marketing, or related discipline.
• 2+ years of experience in retail, ad technology, digital media, and/or advertising analytics.
• 2+ years of experience in data science, ad technology, digital media, and/or advertising analytics.
• 2+ years of experience in extracting insights from large databases, translating market research into actionable solutions and presenting findings and recommendations to clients.
• 2+ years of experience using advanced algorithms, programming languages (Python, SQL), or technologies in the development of technical analytics solutions, capabilities, and ad hoc analyses.
• Experience working cross-functionally to continuously improve existing solutions based on client feedback and validated demand.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills including excellent verbal, written, presentation, and consultation skills.
• Comfortable conveying complex data science techniques and methodological approaches to less technical audiences – both internal and external.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving and decision-making skills.
• Strong data visualization and business acumen skills to link analysis to business impact (grocery and/or retail experience is a plus).
• Natural curiosity that welcomes and embraces ambiguity and change, with a willingness to try new things and to fail.
• Excellent attention to detail, organization skills and ability to work in a collaborative environment.

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SENIOR DATA SCIENTIST (P2408)

SUMMARY:

The Core Science team is responsible for some of our most foundational data science products including enterprise-wide segmentations and store measurement tools. As Senior Data Scientist on the Core Science team, you will build and maintain our new Customer Dimensions and Functional Loyalty. Our team plays a crucial role in building core segmentations that are used across the business in various functions like customer reporting and targeting.

In this role, you will maintain and enhance existing dimensions, support business use of dimensions, build and monitor data quality dashboards, and develop new customer dimensions to expand our view of customers. This includes responding to time-sensitive requests for deep-dive analyses, managing routine processes, and innovation of new segmentations.

You will leverage a diverse technical toolkit including Power BI for dashboard development, GitHub for code management and version control, and PySpark for programming. Additionally, you'll have opportunities to explore the use of embeddings and incorporate AI technologies to enhance our analytical capabilities and create more efficient solutions.

Success in this role requires strong analytical skills and business insights combined with intellectual curiosity and adaptability. We're looking for someone who embraces change, demonstrates enthusiasm for learning new methodologies, and can balance maintaining existing systems while innovating for the future.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Effectively managing projects, tasks and stakeholders to ensure that projects are delivered on time, within budget and to brief specification while ensuring minimal downtime and maximum utilization.
• Interpreting results and developing actionable recommendations from the data analysis to build relevant customer stories for clients.
• Identifying and implementing artificial intelligence solutions to enhance business processes, drive operational efficiencies, and deliver increased value to stakeholders.
• Quality Assurance of own code and that of team members to ensure the highest quality work is being delivered to our clients.
• Identifying opportunities for standardization & automation of existing solutions and processes to enable 84.51° to realize the maximum potential from our teams.
• Challenging and improving 84.51° analytical capabilities/products.
• Working closely with key internal stakeholders to ensure sound knowledge of client objectives and customer insight, to subsequently design best-in-class solutions.

QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS, AND EXPERIENCE:

• 2+ years of experience in consulting or professional services
• 2+ years of experience in extracting insights from large databases, translating market research into actionable solutions and presenting findings and recommendations to clients
• 2+ years of experience using advanced algorithms, programming languages, or technologies in the development of technical analytics solutions or capabilities.
• Experience querying data from relational databases using SQL.
• Experience using R, Python, or other similar statistical software to develop analytical solutions.
• Experience with data wrangling, data cleaning and prep, dimensionality reduction.
• Experience with Big Data concepts, tools, and architecture (e.g. Hadoop, Pig, Hive, Spark, Sparkling Water).
• Ability to create computationally efficient solutions.
• Strong academic background in mathematics, statistics, computer science, economics, or similar discipline.
• Data visualization skills and ability to present technical solutions to non-technical audience.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills.
• Strong analytical, creative problem-solving and decision making skills
• Strong business acumen; grocery and/or retail experience is a plus.
• Passionate about data, analysis and insights.
• Natural curiosity that welcomes and embraces change and willingness to try new things and to fail, particularly in exploring emerging technologies and AI applications.
• Ability to work in a highly collaborative environment.

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