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

The Lead Applied Data Scientist – Search and Ranking role at Target involves developing and deploying scalable deep learning models to improve search experience, using LLM and agentic technologies, and architecting large-scale AI systems. The team works on building NLP technology for query and document analysis, processing, and understanding, and conducts data analysis to identify opportunities and improve models.

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

Benefits

• 401(k)
• Employee discount
• Short term disability
• Long term disability
• Paid sick leave
• Paid national holidays
• Paid vacation