Sr Data Scientist

About the role

This role is a fully autonomous individual contributor who owns end-to-end delivery of complex scientific problem areas within a defined domain. Operating with minimal guidance, the position translates ambiguous but bounded business objectives into robust, production-ready modeling approaches. The individual is accountable for delivery, scientific quality, methodological rigor, and technical decision-making within their scoped area. Close partnership with engineering, product, and business stakeholders ensures solutions align with approved architectures and business priorities. The primary measure of impact is reliable ownership of complex scientific initiatives, elevated scientific quality, and sustained improvement in team-level execution.

Responsibilities

• Work across teams and organizations to put theory into practice through experimentation and invention
• Develop new algorithms for complex problems
• Implement prototypes
• Forecast trends, understand customer preferences, and optimize business outcomes
• Own end-to-end delivery of complex scientific problem areas within a defined domain
• Translate ambiguous but bounded business objectives into robust, production-ready modeling approaches
• Ensure solutions align with approved architectures and business priorities
• Collaborate with interdisciplinary teams to leverage cutting-edge machine learning and data science methodologies
• Design and deploy scalable and production-grade predictive and prescriptive models
• Communicate insights effectively through data visualization techniques

Requirements

• Master’s degree in Operations Research, Statistics, Optimization, Operations Management, Machine Learning, Applied Mathematics, or other related fields
• Proficiency in at least one modern programming language such as Python, Java, or C++
• Basic proficiency with SQL
• Ability to design and implement solutions using both toolkits and custom-developed code
• Demonstrated ability to present business cases and scientific models with rigorous analyses that support conclusions to influence and drive important decisions
• Strong fundamentals in problem solving, algorithm design and complexity analysis
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills for cross-team coordination
• Proven experience in mentoring and growing teams of scientists

Qualifications

• 4+ years of hands-on experience in the relevant field
• PhD degree in Operations Research, Statistics, Optimization, Operations Management, Machine Learning, Applied Mathematics, or other related fields (preferred)
• Extensive experience with Cloud Platforms such as Azure, AWS, or GCP, including their data processing and machine learning toolkits (preferred)
• Proficiency with Optimization Solvers such as Gurobi and Xpress, or experience integrating optimization algorithms into large-scale systems (preferred)
• Hands-on expertise with Big Data Analytics tools, including Scikit-learn, Keras, TensorFlow, Pandas, NumPy, and PySpark (preferred)
• Experience in designing and deploying scalable and production-grade predictive and prescriptive models (preferred)
• Strong knowledge of data visualization techniques and tools to effectively communicate insights (preferred)

Skills

• Advanced analytics
• Machine learning
• Statistical techniques
• Optimization
• Data visualization

Benefits

The benefits package includes:

• Health insurance
• Retirement plans
• Flexible spending accounts
• Employee assistance programs

Pay

Competitive salary commensurate with experience.

Schedule

Full-time, hybrid schedule.

Benefits

Comprehensive benefits package including health insurance, retirement plans, flexible spending accounts, and employee assistance programs.

Skills

• Advanced analytics
• Machine learning
• Statistical techniques
• Optimization
• Data visualization

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Operations Research, Statistics, Optimization, Operations Management, Machine Learning, Applied Mathematics, or other related fields
• 4+ years of hands-on experience in the relevant field
• PhD degree in Operations Research, Statistics, Optimization, Operations Management, Machine Learning, Applied Mathematics, or other related fields (preferred)
• Extensive experience with Cloud Platforms such as Azure, AWS, or GCP, including their data processing and machine learning toolkits (preferred)
• Proficiency with Optimization Solvers such as Gurobi and Xpress, or experience integrating optimization algorithms into large-scale systems (preferred)
• Hands-on expertise with Big Data Analytics tools, including Scikit-learn, Keras, TensorFlow, Pandas, NumPy, and PySpark (preferred)
• Experience in designing and deploying scalable and production-grade predictive and prescriptive models (preferred)
• Strong knowledge of data visualization techniques and tools to effectively communicate insights (preferred)

Equal Opportunity Employer

The Hershey Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The policy of The Hershey Company is to extend opportunities to qualified applicants and employees on an equal basis regardless of an individual's race, color, gender, age, national origin, religion, citizenship status, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, physical or mental disability, protected veteran status, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other categories protected by applicable federal, state or local laws.