The pay range is $128,000.00 - $277,000.00

Pay is based on several factors which vary based on position. These include labor markets and in some instances may include education, work experience and certifications. In addition to your pay, Target cares about and invests in you as a team member, so that you can take care of yourself and your family. Target offers eligible team members and their dependents comprehensive health benefits and programs, which may include medical, vision, dental, life insurance and more, to help you and your family take care of your whole selves. Other benefits for eligible team members include 401(k), employee discount, short term disability, long term disability, paid sick leave, paid national holidays, and paid vacation. Find competitive benefits from financial and education to well-being and beyond at https://corporate.target.com/careers/benefits.

JOIN TARGET AS A LEAD DATA SCIENTIST – LAST MILE OPS DESIGN

About us:

Working at Target means helping all families discover the joy of everyday life. We bring that vision to life through our values and culture. Learn more about Target here.

A role with Target Data Sciences means the chance to help develop and manage state of the art predictive and prescriptive algorithms that use data to automate and optimize decisions at scale.  The Target Data Sciences - Supply Chain Optimization team leverages operations research, simulation, and machine learning to help Target makes intelligent supply chain business decisions.  This involves writing high-performant, scalable code as well as designing analytical solutions to extract insights and to prescribe best courses of action.

Join Target’s Last Mile and Operations Design team where your goal will be to accelerate omni-channel experimentation to foster a culture of continuous innovation at Target. We believe that continuous innovation is critical to delivering and exceeding our brand promise of “Expect More Pay Less” to Target’s guests irrespective of their preferred channel of engagement and commerce.  You will enable continuous innovation and drive business performance in our Target Last Mile Delivery space.

A Lead Data Scientist role within Last Mile and Ops Design is a chance to help lead and define our continued development of our in-house strength for getting the maximum value from Target’s scale and data assets in service of improving the guest and carrier/courier experience.  We see data as a product and an opportunity to experiment and refine our approach to guest experiences.  Together, we positively impact changes to various initiatives, processes and interdependencies that require exceptional data collection, measurement, and timely industry leading analysis—ultimately leading to quicker and more meaningful decision-making.  This is a role for someone passionate about data, feature experimentation, and impacting business strategy.

As a Lead Data Scientist, you will:

• Serve as an advocate of our data-driven culture across Product, Business Ops and Engineering to help them utilize insights that’ll direct their efforts towards initiatives with highest impacts
• You have a strong knowledge of supply chain optimization including the impact of inventory placement on, transportation, sourcing, distribution, fulfillment, and planning
• Execute solutions to business problems using data analysis, data mining, forecasting, optimization tools, and machine learning techniques and statistics
• Formulate precise problem statements, synthesize analysis and results in compelling storylines and communicate to key stakeholders. You should have the ability to tell a story around the problem, the solution and the impact and value of implementing a solution
• Analyze and explore data in our ecosystem, work with the product manager to design in-product experiments, analyze the results, and provide strategic recommendations.
• Partner closely with our Product Owners and/or business partners to identify gaps in product offering by conducting comprehensive data analysis, and accelerating the analytics maturity (predictive and prescriptive) in key product areas
• Define data to be collected for measuring the success of new product features or business strategies, define KPIs, and work with engineering and across functional teams on tracking and instrumentation of data
• Strive for query optimization problems on large data sets that will be leveraged by operations research, business owners, and other stakeholders
• Design and build self-service dashboards using a mixture of analytical and visualization techniques to derive actionable insight from data to influences business decisions
• Democratize data and insights as you strive to deliver self-service tools to your partners and enable them to make better decisions quicker

Core responsibilities of this job are described within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.

About you:

• PhD/MS in Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Physics or related quantitative field
• 5+ years of experience leading large-scale implementations of supply chain optimization, simulation and machine learning modeling end to end
• Demonstrated proficiency in one or more programming languages: Python, R, Kotlin or Java
• Demonstrated experience writing highly performant code and deploying algorithms in a production environment. Proficient in predictive/prescriptive algorithms and ML Ops
• Experience working with large event-driven distributed systems and multi-threaded applications
• Experience in application/software architecture (definition, process modeling, etc.)
• Experience writing production datasets in SQL/Hive or building internal/production data tools for research or experimentation in a scripting language like Python
• Passion for solving relevant real-world problems using a data science approach
• Experience in implementing advanced statistical techniques like regression, clustering, PCA, forecasting (time series), etc.
• Experience producing reasonable documents/narratives suggesting actionable insights
• Excellent communication skills with an ability to clearly tell data driven stories through appropriate visualizations, graphs, and narratives
• Self-driven and results oriented; able to meet tight timelines
• Collaborative team player with ability to partner effectively across time zones

This position will operate as a Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement based on Target’s needs. A Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement means the team member’s core role will need to be performed both onsite at the Target HQ Sunnyvale or ML location the role is assigned to and virtually, depending upon what your role, team and tasks require for that day. Work duties cannot be performed outside of the country of the primary work location, unless otherwise prescribed by Target.

This position may be considered for a Remote or Hybrid (known internally at Target as "Flex for Your Day") work arrangement based on Target's needs.  A Remote work arrangement means the team member works full-time from home or an alternate location that's not a Target location, does not have a desk at a Target location and may travel to HQ up to 4 times a year.  A Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement means the team member's core role may be performed either remote or onsite at a Target location depending upon what your role, team and tasks require for that day. Work duties cannot be performed outside of the country of the primary work location, unless otherwise prescribed by Target.Target will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the San Francisco and City of Los Angeles Fair Chance Ordinances.

Benefits Eligibility

Please paste this url into your preferred browser to learn about benefits eligibility for this role: https://tgt.biz/BenefitsForYou_E

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

In compliance with state and federal laws, Target will make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities. If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please reach out to [email protected]. Non-accommodation-related requests, such as application follow-ups or technical issues, will not be addressed through this channel.  

Application deadline is : 01/29/2026