Sr Applied Data Scientist Search and Browse (Applied ML, NLP, 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 SR 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 core relevance retrieval ranking and personalization systems that power Targets Digital experience. We develop scalable ML systems that improve product discovery semantic search browse relevance and customer engagement across Mobile and Web platforms.

E-commerce Search is rapidly evolving with advances in LLMs semantic retrieval and conversational AI. We are building next-generation discovery experiences that help millions of guests find the right products quickly and intuitively across massive and constantly changing retail catalogs.

Our team is solving large-scale Search challenges at enterprise scale including natural language and long-tail search semantic retrieval zero-shot item understanding and AI-native commerce discovery experiences operating at 10K QPS with strict latency and reliability requirements.

As a Sr Data Scientist Search and Browse youll:

• Develop and deploy scalable ML models for search ranking browse personalization semantic retrieval and query understanding systems
• Design and execute offline and online experiments to improve relevance engagement conversion and customer satisfaction
• Build scalable feature pipelines evaluation frameworks and ML workflows for production systems
• Apply modern ML techniques including embeddings retrieval/ranking models transformers NLP vector search and GenAI/RAG systems
• Improve query understanding catalog understanding semantic retrieval and long-tail search relevance across large retail catalogs
• Partner closely with Product Engineering and Infrastructure teams to align technical solutions with business priorities and operational requirements
• Drive data-informed decision making through deep analysis experimentation and business impact measurement
• Balance model quality with latency scalability reliability and infrastructure efficiency in large-scale production systems
• Contribute to best practices in experimentation ML engineering and operational excellence
• Mentor junior scientists and collaborate across teams to improve Search and Browse experiences

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
• 3 years of industry experience in Machine Learning Data Science Search NLP Personalization or related ML systems
• Exceptional experience with retrieval/ranking systems semantic search NLP vector search or related ML domains
• Strong coding skills in Python and SQL with experience in distributed data processing ecosystems
• Demonstrated hands-on experience building and deploying production ML systems at scale
• Strong understanding of production ML system tradeoffs including latency scalability reliability and operational excellence
• Experience with modern ML approaches such as embeddings transformers semantic retrieval RAG systems or GenAI technologies
• Experience designing experiments and interpreting online/offline metrics
• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to independently drive projects in moderately ambiguous environments
• Very good communication and cross-functional collaboration skills
• Constant learner mentality who stays current with new and evolving AI technologies via formal training and self-directed education

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.