What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Data Scientist position at FreshDirect?
Brief Description
About Us
At FreshDirect, we are reinventing the grocery experience.
Since day one, our mission has been simple: bring the best, freshest food directly from the farm to people’s homes — faster, fresher, and smarter than anyone else.
We’re not just a food company. We’re a technology-powered, customer-obsessed team building one of the most innovative end-to-end food supply chains in the industry. From proprietary routing systems to our state-of-the-art fulfillment center, every part of our business is designed to deliver unmatched quality, convenience, and care.
We partner directly with farmers, fishermen, and artisans to source the highest quality ingredients — then use smart data, automation, and logistics to deliver them at peak freshness.
It’s grocery shopping reimagined — and we’re just getting started.
If you’re passionate about innovation, care deeply about what people eat, and want to help build the future of food, we’d love to meet you.
The Role
FreshDirect delivers fresh groceries across the New York metro area from our own Bronx facility, with our own delivery fleet. Every day we decide how much to make, stock and staff for orders that haven't been placed yet, with perishable inventory and fixed delivery windows. Forecast errors show up directly as spoilage, stockouts or idle trucks.
As our Senior Data Scientist, you will own order and demand forecasting end to end: the models, how they run in production, and how planners use them. You'll sit on the Data Analytics team, report to Sr. Director, Data Analytics, and work closely with Marketing, Operations, Merchandising and Finance.
What You’ll Do
We live these values every day:
A Passion for our customers
Our customers are at the heart of everything we do. We listen, innovate, and act quickly to exceed expectations with every order and interaction.
One team, one mission
Everyone contributes & every role matters. We break silos, lift each other up, and share a relentless focus on delivering results. That way, we win together.
Delivering excellence, every time
We take pride in the quality of our food, service, and the experience we create. Our team goes above and beyond to earn trust and guarantee 100% freshness.
Act with integrity
We operate with honesty, respect, and accountability in how we treat our customers, teammates, and partners. We own our outcomes and always do what’s right, even when no one is watching.
Make fast, bold decisions
We challenge the status quo, embrace technology, and take smart risks to build a better future. At the same time, we stay true to our NYC roots and care for our community.
We love food. Yes, literally all of us.
What You’ll Love About Working Here
$140,000-$160,000
Total Rewards & Benefits
We embrace an in-office culture, composed of individuals who thrive on the collaboration and energy that comes from working together in a shared space. We are looking for people who excel in this environment, where physical presence enhances connections and engagement. At FreshDirect, we've created an environment that thrives on teamwork, where associates can innovate, grow, and have successful careers. Many of our leaders have successfully come up through our ranks. Because of our team's extraordinary efforts, we are a leading innovator in the e-commerce and grocery industries.
Equal Opportunity
We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. Fresh Direct, LLC and its affiliates do not discriminate against applicants or employees because of their race, color, citizenship status, national origin, ancestry, gender, disability, sexual orientation, age, religion, creed, marital status, veteran status, domestic violence victim status, political affiliation, or any other factor protected by federal, state, or local law.
The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by the Team member(s) assigned to this position. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of individuals in this position. Position expectations may be subject to change as the needs of the organization changes.
About Us
At FreshDirect, we are reinventing the grocery experience.
Since day one, our mission has been simple: bring the best, freshest food directly from the farm to people’s homes — faster, fresher, and smarter than anyone else.
We’re not just a food company. We’re a technology-powered, customer-obsessed team building one of the most innovative end-to-end food supply chains in the industry. From proprietary routing systems to our state-of-the-art fulfillment center, every part of our business is designed to deliver unmatched quality, convenience, and care.
We partner directly with farmers, fishermen, and artisans to source the highest quality ingredients — then use smart data, automation, and logistics to deliver them at peak freshness.
It’s grocery shopping reimagined — and we’re just getting started.
If you’re passionate about innovation, care deeply about what people eat, and want to help build the future of food, we’d love to meet you.
The Role
FreshDirect delivers fresh groceries across the New York metro area from our own Bronx facility, with our own delivery fleet. Every day we decide how much to make, stock and staff for orders that haven't been placed yet, with perishable inventory and fixed delivery windows. Forecast errors show up directly as spoilage, stockouts or idle trucks.
As our Senior Data Scientist, you will own order and demand forecasting end to end: the models, how they run in production, and how planners use them. You'll sit on the Data Analytics team, report to Sr. Director, Data Analytics, and work closely with Marketing, Operations, Merchandising and Finance.
What You’ll Do
- Lead the design, development, and deployment of machine learning models to optimize key business functions such as demand forecasting, inventory management, and customer personalization.
- Build and improve daily and weekly order forecasts at multiple levels (company, zone, delivery window, category), including holiday, weather and promotion effects.
- Define the model evaluation framework (time-series cross-validation, rolling-origin backtests, bias and WAPE) and report accuracy to stakeholders on a regular cadence.
- Put models into production on our GCP stack, with monitoring, alerting and a retraining plan, working with data engineering on the upstream data.
- Own feature and model pipelines built on curated BigQuery tables. Source system integration stays with data engineering.
- Collaborate with stakeholders to identify high-impact opportunities for data-driven improvements and provide actionable insights to support business strategies.
- Explain model behavior, uncertainty, and trade-offs to non-technical leaders in plain terms.
- Mentor analysts on statistical methods, Python and good modeling practice.
- 5 years of experience in data science, with a focus on machine learning, predictive modeling, and advanced analytics, with at least one demand or time-series forecasting model you built and ran in production.
- Strong time-series skills: classical methods (e.g. ETS, ARIMA), ML approaches (e.g. gradient boosting) and hierarchical or grouped forecasting and feature engineering (lags, rolling windows, calendar, weather and promotion features)
- A rigorous approach to evaluation: back testing, error metrics and knowing when a simpler model wins.
- Fluent Python (pandas, scikit-learn, a forecasting library such as statsmodels or Darts) and strong SQL.
- Experience deploying and monitoring models on a cloud platform.
- Clear communication with non-technical stakeholders and senior leaders.
- A Bachelor's or Master's degree in a quantitative field in a quantitative field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams and present findings to senior leadership.
- Experience in the e-commerce or retail industry is a plus.
- GCP experience, especially BigQuery and Vertex AI.
- Grocery, e-commerce, retail or last-mile delivery experience, especially with perishables.
- Probabilistic forecasting (prediction intervals, quantile models).
- Experimentation and A/B testing.
We live these values every day:
A Passion for our customers
Our customers are at the heart of everything we do. We listen, innovate, and act quickly to exceed expectations with every order and interaction.
One team, one mission
Everyone contributes & every role matters. We break silos, lift each other up, and share a relentless focus on delivering results. That way, we win together.
Delivering excellence, every time
We take pride in the quality of our food, service, and the experience we create. Our team goes above and beyond to earn trust and guarantee 100% freshness.
Act with integrity
We operate with honesty, respect, and accountability in how we treat our customers, teammates, and partners. We own our outcomes and always do what’s right, even when no one is watching.
Make fast, bold decisions
We challenge the status quo, embrace technology, and take smart risks to build a better future. At the same time, we stay true to our NYC roots and care for our community.
We love food. Yes, literally all of us.
What You’ll Love About Working Here
- A fast-paced, innovative environment where ideas turn into action
- Opportunities for growth — many of our leaders have risen through the ranks
- Direct impact on how thousands of customers experience food every day
$140,000-$160,000
Total Rewards & Benefits
- Competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits
- PTO, Safe & Sick Time, and Paid Holidays
- Medical, Vision, Dental, and Voluntary Disability coverage
- 401(k) with employer match and Life Insurance
- State-of-the-art Bronx campus with on-site basketball court, cafeteria, and employee market
- Onsite FREE parking
- FREE employee shuttle bus service from nearby Subway station
- Training, leadership development, and tuition discount at local colleges
- 20% employee discount on FreshDirect online orders and Brooklyn wine store
- Minimum 50% employee discount at our onsite employee market
- Mobile phone discounts through partnerships with T-Mobile and Verizon
- Gym membership discounts through NYSC
We embrace an in-office culture, composed of individuals who thrive on the collaboration and energy that comes from working together in a shared space. We are looking for people who excel in this environment, where physical presence enhances connections and engagement. At FreshDirect, we've created an environment that thrives on teamwork, where associates can innovate, grow, and have successful careers. Many of our leaders have successfully come up through our ranks. Because of our team's extraordinary efforts, we are a leading innovator in the e-commerce and grocery industries.
Equal Opportunity
We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. Fresh Direct, LLC and its affiliates do not discriminate against applicants or employees because of their race, color, citizenship status, national origin, ancestry, gender, disability, sexual orientation, age, religion, creed, marital status, veteran status, domestic violence victim status, political affiliation, or any other factor protected by federal, state, or local law.
The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by the Team member(s) assigned to this position. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of individuals in this position. Position expectations may be subject to change as the needs of the organization changes.
Salary : $140,000 - $160,000