Sr. Manager, Data Science – Pricing Algorithms - Hybrid

8901 - Corp Office West Crk - 12800 Tuckahoe Creek Parkway, Richmond, Virginia, 23238 Car Max, the way your career should be!

The primary responsibility for the Pricing team is to accurately and systematically value each individual car that we buy and sell. Last year, Car Max sold over 1 million vehicles and appraised over 2 million vehicles, and Pricing directed over $20B in spend to purchase inventory. To properly value these vehicles, our data scientists must develop algorithms that best reflect customer preferences for each vehicle’s unique characteristics and that effectively respond to constantly changing consumer demand, wholesale auction supply, and other global/local market conditions.

Develop optimal pricing strategies that meet both short and long term business objectives

• Leverage exceptional business knowledge, creativity, vision and analytic skills in order to lead the development of optimal pricing strategies
• Develop right optimization strategy given Car Max’s unique business model of selling a non-commodity product at a no-haggle price.
• Leverage strong analytic communication skills to gain broad buy-in to pricing strategies and goals at all levels of the organization
• Continuously improve our pricing strategy by delivering $10-25MM/yr of incremental value

Build a highly engaged team of 4-7 Data Scientists with the skills to implement our pricing strategies across hundreds of thousands of vehicles each year

• Create a rewarding and challenging environment designed to teach uniquely gifted analytic professionals how to become effective, value adding data scientists
• Leverage strong functional expertise in a quickly evolving field to ensure that team members have the right technology to meet today’s business needs.
• Set specific, actionable short and mid-term goals for each team member
• Challenge, develop & recognize team members when they achieve their goals

Lead the building of Artificial Intelligence to autonomously price every vehicle in an optimal way

• Leverage strong mathematics, statistics and technology skills (machine learning, Python, etc.) in order to lead the development of sophisticated pricing models that autonomously implement our strategies
• Leverage strong computer science and software engineering skills in order to build software that (a) Calculates the optimal value for each vehicle and (b) Delivers that value to field associates in seconds
• Lead cross functional efforts to implement new models with IT and the field
• Apply exceptional experiment test and design skills in order to measure the business impact of different pricing changes

Develop and execute a management system that ensures the right value is put on every vehicle every day

• Ensure that the model is tuned to current market conditions by identifying times when immediate strategy changes are needed (ex: gas prices spiking)
• Build and execute a management system to ensure that the model is delivering intended values (alert system, regular review meetings…)
• Quickly respond to and resolve pricing system issues regardless of time of day/week

Car Max relies on algorithms to make important decisions about which cars to buy, how to price them, and how to allocate them across our 200+ stores. Doing so ensures that we have the right cars at the right prices to meet our customers’ needs. As we continue to innovate our business and shift more of our buying and selling online, we increasingly need to make these decisions quickly with less human intervention.

Our team of data scientists plays a critical role in unlocking the business value from these innovations.

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions

• Undergraduate degree with exceptional academic performance in quantitative discipline (Statistics, Math, Data Science, Computer Science, Engineering). Advanced…