Staff Applied Data Scientist

Key Responsibilities

Technical & Strategic Leadership

• Architect End-to-End Solutions: Define the technical vision, architectural standards, and long-term roadmap for SWARM’s core optimization platform, ENGINE, and partner with product and executive leadership to translate real-world agrifood and manufacturing challenges into scalable platform capabilities
• Drive Business & Operational Impact: Identify high-value opportunities to apply optimization, machine learning, and statistical modeling specifically to solve complex operational planning challenges in agrifood, processing, and manufacturing workflows
• Data Science Infrastructure & Innovation: Lead the development of internal data science infrastructure, tools, and workflows, while exploring side projects and emerging technologies to keep our technical stack cutting-edge
• Internal Leadership & Public Ambassadorship: Drive internal technical execution, standards, and team direction, while gradually serving as a public-facing ambassador for SWARM’s technical vision as the role evolves

Team Management & Mentorship

• Manage & Build the Data Science Team: Provide technical leadership, coaching, and career mentorship to the data science team, fostering a culture of high performance, collaboration, and continuous learning
• Resource & Project Planning: Work with leadership to scope, prioritize, and allocate team resources effectively across customer implementations and core product development
• Code & Architecture Reviews: Oversee technical quality by conducting rigorous code reviews, establishing testing standards, and enforcing software engineering best practices across the team

Customer Engagement

• Direct Customer Engagement: Actively participate in customer implementations to uncover root business problems, deeply empathizing with user workflows and operational constraints
• Translate Field Insights to Product Roadmap: Bridge the gap between customer stakeholders, domain experts, and platform engineers, and direct customer implementations to identify recurring patterns and feed domain-specific requirements directly into ENGINE’s core capability design
• Validation & Value Realization: Collaborate directly with clients during deployment phases to test hypotheses, validate solutions, and demonstrate quantifiable business ROI

Qualifications

Required

• Degree in a quantitative field (e.g., Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, Operations Research) or equivalent practical experience
• Strong Software Engineering Foundation: Advanced programming skills in Python with ability to write modular, object-oriented code, and experience with relevant libraries (e.g., scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Pandas, NumPy)
• Proven Track Record: Extensive experience applying data science and mathematical optimization to real-world operational planning, supply chain, or scheduling problems
• Leadership Experience: Prior experience managing, leading, or mentoring data scientists and driving cross-functional alignment across product, engineering, and business stakeholders
• Customer-Facing Aptitude: Excellent communication and consultative skills, with a track record of building trust directly with customers during technical implementations
• Experience with data manipulation and cleaning using SQL and/or other data processing tools
• Experience with cloud platforms
• Strong problem-solving skills and a passion for data-driven decision-making

Even Better

• Familiarity or experience in the agrifood and/or manufacturing sectors
• Experience with modeling libraries like CVXPy, Gurobi, or Google OR-Tools
• Experience with Microsoft Azure
• Experience with CI/CD principles
• Experience with Docker/Kubernetes
• Experience with LLMs (OpenAI, Gemini)
• Advanced proficiency or fluent in Spanish speaking

Why SWARM

• Impact That Matters: Help build technology that makes food systems, manufacturing, and global supply chains more resilient in a decade of volatility
• Cutting-Edge AI: Shape the market narrative for a platform at the frontier of optimization, decision intelligence, and agentic AI
• High-Visibility Role: Report directly to the SVP Data Science & Engineering to drive a function that is at the heart of the company
• Long-Term Impact: What you help build will shape how SWARM is understood by customers, partners, and the market for years to come

Compensation

The salary below is the base salary range for this position. The actual base salary determination will be made based on candidate's experience, location, and other relevant factors. In addition to base salary, the candidate may also be eligible for commissions, performance bonuses, and equity.