Principal Data Scientist

Now, more than ever, the Toast team is committed to our customers. We’re taking steps to help restaurants navigate these unprecedented times with technology, resources, and community. Our focus is on building the restaurant platform that helps restaurants adapt, take control, and get back to what they do best: building the businesses they love. And because our technology is purpose-built for restaurants, by restaurant people, restaurants can trust that we’ll deliver on their needs for today while investing in experiences that will power their restaurant of the future. 

Bready* to make a change?

Toast is looking to expand the Data Science team to deliver new AI models and drive AI Led transformation of Toast. As a Principal Data Scientist, you will bring senior data science technical leadership with domain expertise in Classical and GenAI to the Data Science team.  An ideal candidate would have a wealth of experience in building AI products, softwares with embedded AI algorithms, developing AI platforms or building conversational bots with GenAI. 

About this Roll*:

• Lead the development and implementation of advanced machine learning models to drive business value for Toast and our restaurant customers
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, including Product, Engineering, and Business Strategy, to identify opportunities for leveraging data-driven insights to support growth initiatives.
• Design, develop, and maintain innovative strategies for furthering AI in the organisation that align with the organization's objectives, while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and industry best practices.
• Monitor and analyze the performance of existing models and strategies, identifying areas for improvement and implementing data-driven refinements as needed.
• Present complex data-driven insights and recommendations to stakeholders in a clear, concise, and actionable manner, while fostering a data-driven culture within the organization.
• Mentor and guide junior data scientists, fostering a collaborative environment and promoting the growth and development of the data science team.
• Stay current with the latest trends and developments in data science, GenAI and AI Platform to continually explore new methods and technologies to enhance the organization's capabilities.
• Collaborate closely with internal and external product stakeholders, both technical and non-technical and help translate deep machine learning knowledge to product applications
• Break down larger ML initiatives into smaller problems that enables data science to deliver incremental business value and lead the team to execute on them
• Work with incident response and problem resolution teams to check and resolve any problems/challenges as and when identified in the model deployed in the production   
• Effectively document all steps and manage code repositories for easy scalability and knowledge sharing with the the team
• Incorporate up-to-date ML technology and DS approach as best practice for the team
• Help in continuing to build out and expand the Data Science and ML Engineering teams

Do you have the right ingredients*?

• Advanced degree in quantitative field such as Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering or related discipline 
• 10+ years of experience in Data Science, Machine Learning with a focus on building AI products
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL and experience with data science libraries and tools such as: Spark, Scala, scikit-learn, Tensorflow, PyTorch, XGBoost etc.
• Strong knowledge of underlying mathematical foundations of statistics and machine learning and proficiency in machine learning, AI, and statistical modeling techniques, with a strong track record of developing and deploying successful predictive models in a business setting.
• Prior success deploying machine learning solutions in large-scale production environments
• Deep experience in one or more of the following areas: natural language processing, recommender systems, and deep learning
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to articulate complex data-driven insights to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong leadership skills, with experience mentoring and guiding junior data scientists.
• Advanced degree in Data Science, Statistics, Applied Math, Computer Science, Engineering or other equivalent quantitative disciplines.
• 6 + years of industry experience in the field of Data Science and Machine Learning.
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL; experience with some of the following languages, tools, and frameworks: R, Spark, Scala, scikit-learn, Tensorflow, PyTorch, etc.
• Familiarity with standard software engineering practices and tools including object-oriented programming, test-driven development, CI/CD, git, shell scripting, task orchestration (Airflow, Luigi, etc.) and preferably AWS tooling (Sagemaker, DynamoDB, ECS, etc.)

Bonus ingredients*:

• Passion for research and curiosity that calls you to go beyond “good enough” to create something innovative and exciting
• Self starter who loves to dig into different kinds of data to solve business problems and can communicate their findings to cross-functional stakeholders