Data Scientist Job Sacramento area,California USA,IT/Tech

This is a contract position. Extension may be considered based on business need and performance, but there is no guarantee of permanent employment.

Purpose

This position is responsible for designing, building, validating, and deploying data science and AI solutions that enable data-driven decision-making across Teichert's business operations. The Data Scientist partners with business and technology stakeholders to identify opportunities, develop data science and machine learning models or AI solutions, and translate complex quantitative findings into actionable insights. This role sits within the Data & Technology Solutions division and contributes to the build-out of Teichert's enterprise data platform, data science, and AI capabilities.

Focus & Scope

Essential duties and responsibilities, i.e. those which are basic, necessary, and an integral part of the job, are indicated below:

Serves as a visible ambassador for AI and data science across the organization.

Develops, validates, and deploys analytics & data science models and agentic AI solutions using structured and unstructured data to address business challenges across operations, asset management, finance, and other functional areas.

Designs proof-of-concept frameworks with defined success criteria and evaluation metrics; scales successful POCs into repeatable, production-grade pipelines within Teichert's data platform.

Translates model outputs into actionable decision-support tools and communicates findings clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior leadership.

Collaborates with data engineering to define data ingestion, feature engineering, and model serving requirements; documents model logic, assumptions, data dependencies, and performance benchmarks.

Partners with business and technology stakeholders to identify, scope, and deliver data science and AI use cases; provides technical assessments of vendor-built models and third-party analytics tools as needed.

Relationships, Qualifications and Requirements, & Competencies

Key Relationships

Reports To:

Senior Data, Analytics & AI Manager

Direct Reports:

None

External Clients:

Refineries and Trucking Companies

Internal Clients:

Data, Analytics & AI team members, Data & Technology Solutions teams, business leaders and stakeholders, AI Community of Practice members

Role Qualifications & Requirements

Education:

Master's degree or PhD in Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Engineering, or a related quantitative field.

Experience and Industry Expertise:

Minimum 5 years of hands‑on experience building and deploying predictive models and machine learning solutions.
Experience in asset‑intensive industries such as construction, mining, energy, transportation, or manufacturing is preferred.

Specific

Job Requirements:

Successful completion of pre‑employment drug, alcohol, and background investigation.
Ability to build trust and rapport quickly with employees at all levels, demystifying AI for non‑technical audiences, and championing responsible adoption through day‑to‑day partnership.
Strong programming skills in data science and AI/ML languages (e.g., Python or R), with fluency in core ML and AI libraries such as scikit‑learn, XGBoost/LightGBM, and pandas.
Skilled at leveraging pre‑built and foundation models rather than building from scratch where appropriate; demonstrated ability to design and build agentic AI solutions (e.g., tool use, retrieval, multi‑step orchestration) with appropriate guardrails and evaluation.
Proficiency with SQL and cloud data platforms (e.g., Azure, Databricks, or equivalent); comfort working with large‑scale structured and semi‑structured datasets.
Deep understanding of model validation, evaluation metrics, feature engineering, and ability to identify and mitigate data leakage.
Ability to explain findings, model performance and results, and recommendations clearly to diverse audiences and translate business problems into analytical frameworks.
Ability to preserve confidential and proprietary information and successfully avoid conflicts of interest.
Experience working effectively in cross‑functional teams and establishing positive working…