Lead Data Scientist

Join to apply for the Lead Data Scientist role at Love's Travel Stops
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• Fuel Your Growth with Love's – company funded tuition assistance
• Paid Time Off
• 401(k) – 100% Match up to 5%
• Medical/Dental/Vision Insurance after 30 days
• Competitive Pay
• Career Development

Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States. We do not provide sponsorship for employment visas now or in the future.

The Lead Data Scientist is a hands‑on analytics leader responsible for advancing marketing and customer analytics across Love’s convenience store network. This role blends deep technical expertise with people leadership, owning high‑impact analytical initiatives that influence revenue growth, customer experience, and marketing effectiveness.

• Develop deep understanding of Love’s business, including products, strategy, customers, and performance, and guide your team in aligning analytics initiatives with business priorities
• Collaborate with Marketing and other business units to understand needs and design analytical approaches, then lead your team in implementing advanced analytics and machine learning solutions for key domains such as marketing and operations to deliver actionable insights
• Contribute to the development of enterprise‑wide analytics strategy and roadmap, representing the team’s perspective
• Utilize statistical programming languages (R, Python, SAS) to manipulate data and extract insights from large datasets, ensuring team members follow best practices
• Apply advanced statistical techniques (e.g., A/B testing) and machine learning methods (e.g., time series forecasting, clustering) to solve business problems
• Supervise and develop a team of data scientists, analysts, and/or analytics engineers by setting goals, managing performance, providing feedback, and fostering a collaborative, high‑performing environment
• Promote best practices in data science methodologies, modeling, experimentation, documentation, and model governance across the team
• Prioritize team workload and manage delivery timelines in alignment with strategic objectives
• Identify gaps in measurement and data solutions and lead efforts to recommend and implement improvements that maximize analytics impact
• Communicate complex insights clearly to stakeholders through presentations, reports, and visualizations, coaching team members on effective storytelling
• Partner with data engineering to ensure scalable and robust data infrastructure that supports team objectives
• Stay current with industry trends and emerging tools, introducing innovative techniques into the team’s practice

• BA/BS minimum, Masters preferred, in a relevant field such as business analytics, mathematics, statistics, finance, economics, management information systems, computer science, engineering, or other quantitative fields
• 6+ years of experience preferred in retail, sales, marketing, data, IT, or operations with exposure to reporting and analytics
• In‑depth, hands‑on knowledge of data science tools preferred
• Proven experience with troubleshooting principles and issue resolution technique

• 6+ years of experience querying data from relational databases using SQL, advanced algorithms, programming languages, or technologies in the development of technical analytics solutions or capabilities, and extracting insights from large databases, translating data and insights into actionable solutions and presenting findings
• Competency using R, Python, or other similar statistical software to develop analytical solutions
• Experience with data wrangling, data cleaning and prep
• Proven ability to juggle multiple work streams as needed
• Data modelling and business analytics experience especially within the retail or marketing domain
• Excel proficiency including simple formulas and pivot tables
• Understanding of data warehouse principles and database structures
• Data visualization skills and ability to present technical solutions to non‑technical audience
• 1+ years of experience with mentoring or leading analytical projects
• Natural curiosity that welcomes and embraces change and willingness to try new things
• Excellent written,…