Data Scientist - Optimization

Data Scientist
- Optimization

Toyota's Digital Innovations organization is seeking a Data Scientist
- Optimization to lead the design, development, and industrialization of advanced optimization solutions supporting integrated vehicle and parts supply chain transformation. This role applies mathematical optimization, operations research, data science, and cloud-based engineering practices to help deliver the North American Vehicle Supply Chain vision of providing the right vehicle to the right place at the right time.

The successful candidate will serve as a hands-on technical leader for optimization use cases across demand planning, supply allocation, production and logistics planning, ETA improvement, inventory positioning, scheduling, routing, network design, and decision automation. The role will use commercial optimization platforms such as Gurobi, along with Python-based data science ecosystems and cloud services, to translate complex business constraints into scalable decision models and production-ready products.

Reporting to the General Manager of Supply Chain Transformation, this person will partner closely with business process owners, product owners, application architects, data engineers, platform teams, and executive stakeholders. The role requires strong technical depth, Toyota Way leadership, cross-functional influence, clear communication, and the ability to move advanced analytics solutions from concept to reliable operations.

Leadership Expectations

• Serve as a technical thought leader who can set direction, and hold the team accountable for high-quality delivery.
• Operate with executive presence and communicate risks, decisions, tradeoffs, and value realization clearly to senior leadership.
• Build trust across Digital Innovations, business departments, enterprise architecture, data/platform teams, vendors, and external partners.
• Create a culture of experimentation, disciplined engineering, continuous improvement, and measurable business impact.
• Lead with curiosity and humility — prioritize deeply understanding the business operation before optimizing it, and model collaborative, question-driven behavior for the team.
• Connect the team's optimization roadmap to enterprise direction through Hoshin and OKR planning, prioritizing and sequencing use cases against the 2–3 year supply chain transformation strategy.

What you bring

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Supply Chain Management, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Demonstrated experience building and deploying optimization models using Gurobi or comparable commercial/open-source solvers.
• Strong proficiency in Python and common data science/optimization libraries such as pandas, Num Py, Sci Py, Pyomo, OR-Tools, scikit-learn, or equivalent tools.
• Experience formulating optimization problems with real-world constraints, imperfect data, competing objectives, and operational tradeoffs.
• Experience with cloud-based data and analytics platforms and with moving advanced analytics or optimization solutions into production environments.
• Experience leading or managing multi-disciplinary teams that include data scientists, engineers, architects, product owners, application developers, and business process owners.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple initiatives simultaneously while balancing scope, value, risk, timeline, budget, and resource constraints.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to simplify technical content for senior leaders and business stakeholders.
• Strong Agile/Scrum delivery experience, including backlog refinement, sprint planning, acceptance criteria definition, demos, and release readiness.
• Demonstrated success working in a fusion or cross-functional product team alongside product owners, domain SMEs, and engineers from diverse backgrounds — listening first, asking probing questions to understand the operation before solving, and building shared understanding and trust across disciplines.

Added bonus if you have

• Master's degree or Ph.D. in Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Data Science, or a related quantitative discipline.
• Automotive industry experience, especially in vehicle supply chain, demand and supply planning, production planning, allocation, logistics, distribution, or dealer-facing operations.
• Strong understanding of supply chain planning, logistics, manufacturing, inventory, allocation, scheduling, or transportation management processes
• Experience with integrated business planning, sales and operations planning, network optimization, ETA improvement, vehicle ordering, production confirmation, or logistics orchestration.
• Hands-on experience with cloud services such as AWS, Azure, or GCP and with production patterns for APIs, batch optimization, event-driven optimization, and model monitoring.
• Experience designing…