Data Scientist – Inventory Analytics

Job Description

Come work at a place where innovation and teamwork come together to support the most exciting missions in the world!

Come work at a place where innovation and teamwork come together to support the most exciting missions in the world!

Enterprise Analytics & Data Science (EADS) is the advanced analytics department at Petco, delivering data-driven value across Inventory & Assortment, Fulfilment, Pricing, Customer and Marketing.

Our EADS inventory team applies data science to guide the right product to the right location at the right time to maximize sales across channels, while balancing inventory investment and logistics cost.

As a Data Scientist within the inventory team, you'll play a critical role in optimizing Petco’s forecast and replenishment capabilities. The ideal candidate will have a strong statistical background in forecasting (including measures of uncertainty around predictions, i.e. probabilistic forecasting) and will be able to design, develop and refine statistical / ML models that drive a measurable financial impact. You will work alongside our Senior Data Scientist, and report to the Director of Inventory Analytics & Data Science.

Essential Job Functions

• Develop a strong understanding of the Petco business, including pain-points for customers and teams. Apply a “business-value” lens to all initiatives
• Develop, test and operationalize high-accuracy forecasting model(s) to set replenishment quantities at stores and purchasing quantities into DCs
  • Analyze historical data (sales, inventory, footfall, price, product attributes, etc.) and apply statistical techniques (amount of variation, target / pairwise correlation, multicollinearity, stepwise selection etc.) to identify relevant features for demand prediction
  • Transform data to develop new, informative features for demand prediction (lag features, relative price features, categorical variable encoding, etc.)
  • Showcase (through statistical analysis and business explanation) the causal relationships between features and demand
  • Consolidate data into an appropriate format for algorithm use, balancing model accuracy and computational performance
  • Develop, train and refine model(s), using cross-validation to optimize hyperparameters, maximize performance and avoid over-fitting
  • Collaborate with data engineering to create data pipelines and operationalize model(s)
  • Continuously monitor deployed models and experiment with different algorithms / novel approaches to improve productionized model performance.
• Communicate verbally and through written presentation to share insights and recommendations to audiences with varying technical understanding
• Develop and monitor KPIs to track business performance improvements, and socialize to teams
• Create and maintain comprehensive technical documentation to educate teams about models, key concepts and considerations
• Contribute to analytics initiatives at times when data science is not the immediate priority. (This role will have a dominant data science component, but business reality may sometimes dictate collaboration on other advanced analytics efforts.)

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a quantitative field such as Data Science, AI/ML, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, Computer Science or Operations Research
• 2+ years of relevant industry experience (retail preferred) in an analytical role involving application of statistical / ML modeling to real-world business challenges – with evidence of how your work has contributed to business value
• Preferably with a background in Supply Chain or Inventory Optimization – understanding of how retailers translate forecasts for practical use (e.g. store replenishment and purchase orders) is a significant plus
• Experience with statistical analysis techniques and predictive modelling:
  • Excellent quantitative modeling, statistical analysis skills and problem-solving skills
  • Experience developing and implementing demand forecasting models – experience with probabilistic forecasting (e.g. quantile regression) is a significant plus
  • Strong exploratory data analysis (EDA) and feature engineering skillset
  • Experience working with machine learning algorithms to address real-world business problems (one or more of: neural networks ANNs / RNNs, XGBoost, Random Forest)
  • Experience conducting time series analysis (Regression, ETS, [S]ARIMA[X], etc.)
  • Strong understanding of statistical theory and distributions (poisson, gamma, negative binomial, exponential, normal, etc.). Ability to translate statistical notation (e.g. from research papers) to business language is a plus
• Strong technical competency with data science tools:
  • Proficiency in data science languages – Python and SQL
  • Libraries (expertise in an ML library is a significant plus): Pandas, Numpy, Matplotlib / Seaborn, Scikit-Learn, TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch
  • Cloud ecosystem experience (one or more of): GCP, AWS, Azure
  • Data warehouse experience (one or more of): Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Synapse
  • Data visualization (nice to have): Looker, Power BI, Tableau

Culture Snapshot

Our team is passionate about delivering meaningful business value through advanced analytics. Retail provides one of the most tangible environments for data scientists to drive impact, and Petco is an industry leader – delivering ~$6B revenue across 1,400+ stores and significant omnichannel presence.

We have ambitious goals to establish an industry-leading forecasting & replenishment capability and have the talent within our EADS and business teams to realize this goal.

We are proud to offer a career experience that will make you excited to come to work every day. We are creating an environment of continuous improvement through collaboration and diverse thinking, working with talented colleagues to solve challenging problems. At Petco you will have daily opportunities to learn and inspire those around you.

A few perks of joining our team:

• Competitive salary
• Remote-friendly (our EADS team works across the US / Canada)
• Friendly, passionate and intelligent employee base
• Creative problem solving and entrepreneurial thinking
• Fast-paced environment and solution-driven culture
• Pet-friendly office
• On-site gym (San Diego Head Office)

Petco Animal Supplies, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, protected veteran status, or any other protected classification.