(USA) Principal, Data Scientist

About the team

Sam’s Club Applied AI Labs develops advanced AI solutions that empower merchants and club teams to make faster, data-driven decisions. The team delivers impactful machine learning and agentic tools across assortment, pricing, and replenishment, transforming data into actionable insights used daily throughout the business. Operating with high ownership, the team manages projects end to end, focusing on real-world adoption and measurable impact. Members collaborate closely to build scalable AI systems that drive business value, continuously innovating and deploying solutions that enhance operational efficiency and decision-making across the organization.

Responsibilities

• Architect and scale agentic AI copilots that help merchants and business teams make faster, sharper decisions.
• Design and ship LLM and agentic systems — tool-calling, retrieval, multi-step reasoning — from prototype to production.
• Build rigorous evaluation, guardrails, and observability so AI solutions stay accurate, safe, and trusted at scale.
• Turn complex business workflows and large datasets into reliable, high-impact AI capabilities.
• Partner with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to translate real problems into technical solutions.
• Set technical direction and mentor data scientists on agentic AI, modeling, and engineering best practices.

Requirements

• Deep experience building and deploying machine learning and LLM/agentic systems in production.
• Strong Python and SQL, with solid software engineering and MLOps/LLMOps skills.
• Hands-on expertise with agentic frameworks, tool-calling, retrieval-augmented generation, and prompt and evaluation design.
• Proven ability to design evaluation, guardrails, and observability for generative AI.
• Skill translating ambiguous business needs into scalable, well-architected AI solutions.
• A track record of technical leadership — setting direction, raising the bar, and mentoring teams.
• A bias for impact: you measure success by real adoption and business outcomes, not demos.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Option 1: Bachelor's degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Technology or related field and 5 years' experience in an analytics related field.
• Option 2: Master's degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Information Technology or related field and 3 years' experience in an analytics related field.
• Option 3: 7 years' experience in an analytics or related field.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Data science, machine learning, optimization models.
• PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Information Technology, Operations Research, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Econometrics.
• Publications or active peer reviewer in related journals or conference.
• Successful completion of one or more assessments in Python, Spark, Scala, or R.
• Using open source frameworks (for example, scikit learn, tensorflow, torch).
• Background in creating inclusive digital experiences, demonstrating knowledge in implementing Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standards, assistive technologies, and integrating digital accessibility seamlessly.

Benefits

• Health benefits include medical, vision and dental coverage.
• Financial benefits include 401(k), stock purchase and company-paid life insurance.
• Paid time off benefits include PTO, parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting. You will also receive PTO and/or PPTO that can be used for vacation, sick leave, holidays, or other purposes. The amount you receive depends on your job classification and length of employment.
• Short-term and long-term disability.
• Company discounts.
• Military Leave Pay.
• Adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement.
• Live Better U: company-paid education benefit program for full-time and part-time associates, covering tuition, books, and fees for programs ranging from high school completion to bachelor's degrees, including English Language Learning and short-form certificates.

Pay

The annual salary range for this position is $110,000.00 - $220,000.00. Additional compensation includes annual or quarterly performance bonuses. Additional compensation for certain positions may also include Regional Pay Zone (RPZ) (based on location).