Senior Data Scientist

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At Crutchfield, our innovative company culture is centered around helping our employees succeed while delivering best-in-class service to our customers. We're looking for a Senior Data Scientist to join our team based in either our Charlottesville location or in our Norton Virginia location. If you haven't heard of us, we're a unique blend of things: an acclaimed, national online retailer, a family-owned business that's Virginia-based, and a community-oriented group of consumer electronics enthusiasts.

In short, we sell fun stuff and love doing it! For the 3rd year in a row, we've been named as one of the Best Places to Work by Virginia Business Magazine and Best Companies Group.

Position Overview:

Crutchfield is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to lead advanced analytics initiatives and embed data driven decision making into core business processes. In this role, you'll work across a diverse portfolio of production systems supporting marketing, ecommerce, logistics, merchandising, customer support, and fraud prevention.

Projects span predictive modeling, ranking and optimization, time-to-event analysis, and generative AI. The work ranges from classical, highly interpretable models such as linear and logistic regression to modern ensemble methods, learning-to-rank systems, survival models, and LLM-powered applications. At Crutchfield, Senior Data Scientists play a key role not only in modeling, but also in production deployment, iteration, and long-term model stewardship.

The ideal candidate brings strong technical skill, intellectual curiosity, and the ability to translate complex analysis into clear, practical recommendations. Senior Data Scientists at Crutchfield are expected to take ownership of key modeling systems, influence technical direction, and help shape where data science delivers the most value.

As a Senior Data Scientist you will:

• Design, develop, and maintain production-grade models including regression, classification, ranking, optimization, and time-to-event models
• Own end-to-end modeling workflows—from problem formulation and feature engineering through deployment, monitoring, and iteration
• Work on a wide range of applied problems such as:
  • Paid search bidding
  • Fraud detection and order security
  • Customer targeting and marketing lift modeling (catalog, email, SMS)
  • Search, ranking, and recommendation systems for products, accessories, content, and site navigation
  • Forecasting demand, costs, shipping timelines, and delivery ETAs
  • Integrating large language models into backend workflows and customer-facing experiences
• Build and score models in batch, near-realtime, and realtime contexts, balancing latency, performance, and interpretability
• Leverage Python-based modeling tools (with some R) and SQL Server to extract, transform, and analyze complex datasets
• Collaborate closely with engineering, product, marketing, logistics, fraud, and customer support teams to translate business needs into scalable analytical solutions
• Communicate model behavior, assumptions, and impact clearly to technical and nontechnical stakeholders
• Mentor junior data scientists and contribute to shared standards around modeling, validation, documentation, and deployment

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, or a related field
• 5+ years of experience building and deploying data science or advanced analytics solutions in production environments
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL Server
  , with experience working on large, real-world datasets
• Demonstrated experience with predictive modeling, machine learning, and statistical techniques, including both interpretable and advanced methods
• Comfort operating in ambiguous problem spaces and selecting the right level of modeling sophistication for the business problem
• Excellent analytical reasoning, written communication, and stakeholder collaboration skills
• Intellectual curiosity and a collaborative mindset

Preferred Skills

• Experience with learning-to-rank models and recommendation systems
• Experience with survival analysis and time to event modelling
• Hands-on experience deploying and maintaining models over time (MLOps, monitoring, retraining)
• Familiarity with Azure
  , including Azure OpenAI or similar LLM platforms
• Experience incorporating LLMs into analytical or operational workflows

This position follows a hybrid work model, with 3 days onsite each week and the remaining days remote. Candidates should be able to commute to our office regularly and collaborate in person with team members. All remote work must be done within the Commonwealth of Virginia.

This full-time position comes with a comprehensive benefit package including two health insurance plans to choose from along with dental and vision insurance plan options. We also offer a competitive wellness program, tuition reimbursement, 401K retirement plan, relaxed dress code, and discounts on the fun stuff we sell.

All full-time employees are also offered: short-term disability insurance and…