What are the responsibilities and job description for the Machine Learning Specialist position at Beck's Superior Hybrids?
This person will design, develop, and deploy advanced models that drive innovation and data-driven decision-making to assist breeding and testing efforts for row crops. This role will focus on building predictive models that integrate genetic, environmental, and phenotypic data to accelerate plant breeding and agronomic insights. This position will work closely with geneticists, plant scientists, and data engineers to develop algorithms that translate raw data into actionable insights for corn breeding, envirotyping, and yield forecasting.
As a member of the Beck’s Family of employees, all full-time employees are eligible for a generous benefits package:
- Health benefits including two medical plan options and company HSA contributions, dental, vision, employer paid life/AD&D for you and your dependents, disability insurance, and access to an onsite Nurse Practitioner
- 401k plan match & company sponsored pension plan and access to a Financial Advisor to help you manage your retirement savings
- Paid time off, Paid Holidays, Wellness Programs, & Corporate Discounts
- Company Christmas Party, Free Lunch, Two Hundred Dollar Merchandise Allowance, & Much More
Responsibilities
- Interact cooperatively with corn breeding, biotechnology laboratory and phenomics staff to facilitate an efficient and effective modern breeding program.
- Support breeding programs with predictive models for yield, drought tolerance, or disease resistance.
- Build, optimize and maintain scalable ML pipelines for preprocessing, training, deployment, and monitoring.
- Work with cross-functional teams to understand business challenges and translate them into machine learning solutions.
- Collect, preprocess, and analyze large-scale structured and unstructured datasets.
- Monitor model performance, retrain as needed, and ensure fairness, robustness, and interpretability.
- Implement machine learning and other modern statistical techniques in conjunction with rest of computational genomics team.
- Stay up to date with the latest ML/AI research, tools, and frameworks, and recommend innovative approaches.
- Communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical shareholders.
- Anticipate and propose technological updates and capital needs well in advance.
- Perform other related duties as may be required by Beck’s management.
Job Requirements
Education and training:
- BS required, MS or PhD preferred in statistics, data analytics, computer science, mathematics, plant breeding, genetics, animal science (or related discipline)
- Must possess and maintain a valid driver’s license and insurable driving record as determined by Beck’s automobile insurance policy.
Skills:
- Thorough understanding of analytical tools such as Python, R, SQL, or similar.
- Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, and software engineering principles.
- Practical experience with deep learning, reinforcement learning, decision trees, or language models.
- Practical experience developing and deploying production level code with full documentation.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
- Possess a positive attitude.
- Ability to establish priorities, work independently or on a team, and proceed with objectives without supervision.
Experience:
- Three (3) years of experience in a machine learning or data analytic role preferred
** In an effort to provide a safer, drug-free workplace for employees, all full-time applicants to whom offers of employment are made must submit to a drug test and background check, subject to applicable local, state, or federal laws or regulations. Employment at Beck's is contingent upon passing these pre-employment screenings.