Principal Applied Data Scientist Search and Browse (NLP, Vector Search, LLMs)

Pay is based on several factors which vary based on include labor markets and in some instancesmay include education work experience and addition to your pay Target cares about and invests in you as a team member so that you can take care of yourself and your family. Target offers eligible team members and their dependents comprehensive health benefits and programs which may include medical vision dental life insurance and more to help you and your family take care of your whole benefits for eligible team members include 401(k) employee discount short term disability long term disability paid sick leave paid national holidays and paid competitive benefits from financial and education to well-being and beyond at TARGET AS A PRINCIPAL DATA SCIENTIST SEARCH AND BROWSE

About Us:

Working at Target means helping all families discover the joy of everyday life. We bring that vision to life through our values and culture. Learn more about Target here.

A role withApplied Data Sciences team at Targetmeans the chance to help develop and managestate of the art predictivealgorithmsthatuse data at scale to automateand optimize decisions at scale. Whether you join our Search RecSys Supply Chain Optimization or Machine Learning teams youll be challenged to harness Targets impressive data breadth to build the algorithmsthat power solutions our partners in Marketing Supply Chain Optimization Network Security and Personalization rely on. Every Scientist on Targets Data Sciences team can expect modeling and data science software/product development of highly performant code for Model Performance and to elevate Targets culture and apply retail domain knowledge.

About our Search and Browse team:

The Search and Browse Applied Data Science team builds the foundational relevance retrieval ranking and personalized search systems that power Targets Digital experience at scale. We are defining the future of AI-native commerce discovery across Search Browse and emerging conversational shopping experiences.

E-commerce Search is undergoing a massive transformation and we are building the architecture to lead it. We are solving some of the hardest problems in retail AI at a $10B commercial scale and 10K QPS including:

• Architecting search and data systems for external LLM ingestion so our catalog wins in ChatGPT Gemini agentic commerce and the next generation of AI-native discovery experiences
• Building zero-shot and cold-start discovery systems for rapidly changing seasonal retail inventory
• Solving natural language and long-tail search problems where conversational queries and traditional retrieval systems break against massive unstructured product catalogs
• Evolving multi-stage retrieval and ranking architectures that balance relevance quality latency scalability and infrastructure efficiency at enterprise scale

We are looking for pragmatic builders and technical leaders who thrive on shipping production systems at scale. Engineering excellence sub-second latency operational reliability infrastructure economics and seamless integration with core Retrieval and Ranking systems matter just as much as modeling sophistication.

This role requires deep technical expertise exceptional product judgment and the ability to influence organizational strategy while driving measurable customer and business impact

As a Principal Data Scientist Search and Browse youll:

• Define the long-term technical vision and organizational roadmap for Search Browse and AI-driven discovery systems
• Lead architecture strategy for large-scale retrieval ranking semantic search and GenAI systems operating at massive scale
• Drive innovation across transformers LLMs RAG architectures multi-stage ranking systems personalization conversational commerce and agentic AI
• Architect search and retrieval systems for external LLM and agentic search ecosystem integration
• Define the future evolution of semantic retrieval conversational search and zero-shot discovery systems
• Influence organization-wide strategy across relevance experimentation evaluation ML infrastructure and AI product investments
• Lead highly ambiguous multi-quarter initiatives involving Product Engineering Applied Science Infrastructure and executive stakeholders
• Establish scalable ML architecture patterns experimentation standards and operational best practices across multiple teams
• Drive foundational investments and technical direction across Search Retrieval Infrastructure and AI-powered discovery platforms
• Balance customer experience business impact system reliability latency scalability and infrastructure cost at enterprise scale
• Mentor Lead scientists and technical leaders across the organization
• Represent the organization in executive reviews and drive alignment on major technical and product decisions
• Influence technical direction and investment priorities across multiple teams and organizations

Core responsibilities of this job are articulated within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.

About you:

• PhD or MS in Computer Science Statistics Applied Mathematics Physics or related quantitative discipline
• 8 years of industry experience building and scaling ML systems for Search Recommendation Personalization Ads or AI platforms
• Strong experience with semantic retrieval vector search RAG systems conversational search or agentic AI systems
• Deep expertise in retrieval/ranking architectures recommendation systems semantic search NLP/LLMs experimentation and ML infrastructure (VertexAI)
• Demonstrated Python programming and technical ML problem-solving skills
• Proven experience defining architecture and long-term strategy for large-scale production AI systems
• Experience operating large-scale online systems with strict latency scalability reliability and infrastructure cost requirements
• Strong understanding of retrieval/ranking system tradeoffs experimentation strategy and operational excellence
• Strong track record driving measurable business impact through ML innovation
• Experience leading cross-functional initiatives spanning multiple teams or organizations
• Ability to influence executive stakeholders and drive organizational technical direction
• Exceptional communication technical leadership strategic thinking and mentoring skills

This position will operate as a Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement based on Targets needs. A Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement means the team members core role will need to be performed both onsite at the Target HQ in Sunnyvale CA or MN location the role is assigned to and virtually depending upon what your role team and tasks require for that day. Work duties cannot be performed outside of the country of the primary work location unless otherwise prescribed by Target. Clickhereif you are curious to learn more about Minnesota.

Benefits Eligibility

In compliance with state and federal laws Target will make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities. If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process please reach out to Non-accommodation-related requests such as application follow-ups or technical issues will not be addressed through this channel.