Data Scientist, Material Planning

Job Description

The Role

The Material Planning group in Supply Chain is responsible for the reliable and efficient flow of all production materials to Tesla’s factories, for the distribution of Energy and Solar products, and for availability of parts in Tesla’s Service locations.

As Data Scientist in the Process and Analytics team, you will develop advanced analytics models to optimize our current supply chain, and to design future networks.

You will acquire domain knowledge about Tesla’s Supply Chain processes, systems and KPIs, and leverage your deep understanding of optimization, simulation and statistics to solve material planning, warehousing, and logistics business problems.

Your scope will include Supply Chain problems such as optimizing supplier orders for high utilization in Inbound Logistics, designing the physical network and material flow for distribution, or recommending safety stock levels and reorder points.

You will work closely with business stakeholders to incorporate essential tradeoffs within your models, and take an active role in effectively communicating the recommendations to senior management.

You will be a thought leader in developing solutions as well as managing the project execution.

It is essential that you can think strategically, connecting the dots in the bigger picture, as well as being comfortable in the details of the deliverables.

To be a successful candidate for this role you have to be a self-motivated, driven individual who is comfortable working in a fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities

• Work with business stakeholders to Identify, prioritize, and structure complex and ambiguous challenges, where advanced analytics projects or tools can have the biggest impact.
• Draw from multiple analytical methods to choose the right tool and right level of complexity appropriate for the business challenges.
• Design and implement quantitative models, either for stand-alone use as prototypes for new system functionality
• Communicate findings and recommendations to senior management.
• Work with Application Engineering to incorporate models into Tesla’s business applications.

Requirements

• Masters in Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Math, Operations Research or a related field.
• 3-5+ years hands-on experience in in building models and developing algorithms for operations research, simulation, statistics, and machine learning
• Programming skills with at least one object oriented language (e.g. Java) and one scripting language (e.g. Python)
• Experience with statistical software (R), database languages (SQL), and predictive modeling/ ML tools (Scikit Learn, R)
• Working knowledge of optimization tools (Gurobi, Cplex, or Xpress)
• Strong critical thinking and problem solving ability
• Sound communication skills - adept at messaging domain and technical content, at a level appropriate for the audience
• Experienced at understanding key performance levers and metrics to highlight operational issues and drive improvement.
• Curiosity and bias to action with ability to identify, define and execute project plans and develop modeling approaches suitable for the problem
• Self-sufficient with an ability to thrive in an environment of autonomy amidst ambiguity
• Collaborative, flexible, open working style and an ability to establish trust and credibility.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-moving and constantly evolving high growth environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• PhD
• Supply Chain or Operations experience

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