Senior Data Scientist – Assortment 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 assortment team applies data science to understanding the merchandising landscape and provide recommendations for adding, refining and right-sizing high value assortment.

As a Senior Data Scientist within the assortment team, you'll analyze large, multi-dimensional datasets to guide merchants on which products Petco should carry across sales channels. You will collaborate closely with merchandise, e-commerce, IT and marketing teams to ensure consistency in product data and provide data-driven insight to support intelligent assortment decisions.

Essential Job Functions

• Develop a strong understanding of the Petco business, including product hierarchy, channels and sales performance, strategic goals, etc. Apply a “business-value” lens to all initiatives
• Analytically assess assortment performance and identify opportunities to drive conversion, grow revenue and reduce costs (e.g. through SKU rationalization, breadth vs depth improvements, store space optimization, balancing variety vs. paradox of choice)
• Build and maintain assortment intelligence tools that leverage data from multiple sources (internal systems, 3rd party data and site scraping) to deliver actionable insights
• Execute solutions to assortment business problems using data analysis, data mining, forecasting, and statistics to identify types of products Petco should and should not carry
• Utilize syndicated data, such as Nielsen and NPD, to gather holistic competitive market and customer insights
• Synthesize analysis and communicate actionable recommendations to Petco teams. Share insights verbally and through written presentation to audiences of varying technical understanding
• Design and build self-service reporting (developing high-performance data pipelines from our cloud EDW and visualizing in Looker), enabling e-commerce and merchant teams to track business performance and make informed decisions.
• Create and maintain comprehensive technical documentation to educate teams about models, key concepts and considerations
• Acts as an advocate for continuous improvement, identifying opportunities and efficiencies to improve our existing systems and processes (both in business and analytics, e.g. MLOps)
• Lead / 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
• 3+ 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 Merchandising, Pricing, Marketing or related field – understanding of merchandising, marketing and selling principles is a significant plus
• Experience with statistical analysis techniques and predictive modelling:
  • Regression analyses (linear regression, logistic regression, quantiles, etc.)
  • Segmentation / clustering techniques (K-means, DBSCAN, etc.)
  • Strong exploratory data analysis (EDA) and feature engineering skillset
  • Machine learning (neural networks – ANNs, RNNs like LSTM / transformer, XGBoost, Random Forest, supervised deep learning)
  • Recommender systems (collaborative filtering, content-based filtering, etc.)
  • Experience with retail-specific modelling considerations – cannibalization, halo effects, cross-elasticity of demand (from substitutes), cross-channel cannibalization, etc.
  • Text mining & unstructured data analytics
• Strong technical competency with data science tools:
  • High proficiency working in Python and SQL
  • Libraries (expertise in at least one ML library): TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch, Scikit-Learn, Pandas, Numpy, Matplotlib / Seaborn
  • Cloud ecosystems (expertise in at least one): GCP, AWS, Azure
  • Data warehouses (expertise in at least one): Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Synapse
  • Analytics platforms (nice to have): Vertex AI, Databricks, Alteryx
  • Data visualization (expertise in at least one): Looker, Power BI, Tableau
  • Familiarity with DevOps / MLOps concepts: Git branching, CI / CD / CT

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 assortment 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.