Applied Data Scientist

Job Description

Applied Data Scientist

Applied Research Group – Supply Chain Optimization

About GAINS

GAINS is on a mission to make supply chains smarter, faster, and self-improving, powered by AI. Our decision intelligence platform doesn't just support decisions, it drives them by aligning strategy, planning, and execution across every level of the supply chain. We serve inventory-intensive industries where the stakes are high and the complexity is real, helping customers move from reactive, spreadsheet-driven planning to continuously learning, AI-led operations that deliver measurable results fast. At GAINS, we call it Moving Forward Faster— and it's not a tagline, it's how we're redefining what's possible in driving supply chain decisions.

About the Role

As an Applied Data Scientist on the Applied Research Group at GAINS, you will research, design, build, and deploy production ML models that directly improve supply chain outcomes for enterprise customers. This is a hybrid role that spans the full ML lifecycle—from exploratory analysis and model development through production deployment and ongoing performance tuning. Your work will address core supply chain problems where machine learning delivers measurable business value.

On any given week, you might be designing a new feature engineering approach, running experiments to evaluate alternative modeling techniques, debugging model drift for a specific customer, or building pipeline infrastructure to operationalize a new ML capability. You will collaborate closely with product managers, professional services, software engineers, and customer-facing teams to translate complex supply chain challenges into well-scoped ML solutions.

This is a hands-on IC role with high autonomy and direct impact on customer outcomes and revenue. You will own ML projects end-to-end—the science and the engineering.

A Day in the Life

Research, design, and develop machine learning models for supply chain applications that drive measurable improvements in operational efficiency and planning accuracy

Perform exploratory data analysis, statistical modeling, and feature engineering on large, complex supply chain datasets to identify signals and improve model performance

Design and run experiments to evaluate new modeling approaches, loss functions, feature sets, and hyperparameter configurations—interpreting results and translating findings into production improvements

Build and maintain robust ML pipelines that process, clean, and transform data from enterprise supply chain systems (SQL databases, APIs, ERP integrations)

Deploy and maintain models in cloud-based production environments, managing the full lifecycle from training through inference and monitoring

Implement model evaluation, drift detection, and monitoring frameworks to ensure reliability across diverse customer environments

Diagnose and resolve model performance issues for individual customers—investigating data quality, feature behavior, and distributional shifts

Partner with product managers, professional services, and engineering teams to understand customer problems and scope ML solutions appropriately

Communicate findings, model behavior, trade-offs, and recommendations clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Contribute to the team’s technical direction on ML methodology, architecture, tooling, and best practices

Required Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Data Science, Engineering, Operations Research, or a related technical field; or equivalent professional experience

3+ years hands-on experience in applied machine learning or data science roles, with models developed and deployed to production

Strong Python skills with experience writing clean, maintainable, production-grade ML code

3+ years professional SQL experience, including complex queries against large enterprise datasets

Deep understanding of statistical and machine learning methods: gradient boosting (LightGBM, XGBoost, CatBoost), regression, decision trees, clustering, time series techniques, and model evaluation methodology

Experience with feature engineering for structured and tabular data, including domain-informed feature design, temporal feature construction, and feature selection techniques

Demonstrated ability to design experiments, evaluate model performance rigorously, and iterate on approaches based on empirical results

Experience building and maintaining ML pipelines—data ingestion, feature engineering, training, evaluation, deployment

Working knowledge of cloud-based ML infrastructure (Azure preferred; AWS or GCP acceptable)

Strong communication skills with the ability to explain model behavior, experimental results, and trade-offs to non-technical audiences

Self-directed with a track record of owning ML projects end-to-end—from problem formulation through production delivery—with minimal supervision

Preferred Qualifications

Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Statistics, Data Science, Engineering, Operations Research, or a related technical field

Experience in supply chain, operations, or logistics domains

Background in time series modeling, probabilistic methods, or optimization techniques applied to operational problems

Familiarity with Databricks, Spark, or similar distributed compute platforms for ML workloads

Experience with Azure services: Azure ML, Container Apps, App Configuration, DevOps pipelines

Experience working directly with enterprise customers to tune, validate, and explain model outputs in their specific business context

Experience with MLflow for experiment tracking and model versioning

Experience with Kafka or similar event streaming platforms for real-time data integration

Curiosity about the business processes your models serve and motivation to understand how supply chain decisions are actually made

Core Competencies

Customer Impact: Builds solutions with the end customer in mind—measures success by business outcomes, not model metrics alone

Analytical Depth: Goes beyond surface-level results to understand why models behave the way they do, especially when they fail—combines scientific rigor with practical problem-solving

Engineering Rigor: Writes production-quality code, designs reliable pipelines, and thinks about failure modes before they happen

Manages Complexity: Navigates messy real-world data and ambiguous problem definitions to deliver practical, scalable solutions

Communicates Effectively: Translates technical model behavior and experimental findings into clear narratives for product, services, and leadership audiences

Drives Results: Takes ownership, follows through on commitments, and delivers measurable improvements to customer outcomes

Technology Environment

Python, LightGBM, SQL, Azure (Container Apps, ML, DevOps), Databricks, Git/GitHub. Enterprise supply chain platform with SQL Server backends and REST APIs.

Why GAINS

- Work on software that leverages AI and ML to solve real logistics challenges for customers

- Direct impact on developer experience across the entire engineering org

- Collaborative, low-bureaucracy environment where engineers own their work end-to-end

- Competitive compensation and benefits

We are committed to equal employment opportunity and welcome everyone regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, marital status, domestic partner status, veteran status or medical condition. We encourage people from all backgrounds to apply.

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Full-time

Hybrid remote