AI/ML Expert – Retail & Ecommerce (Contract)

Our client, a prominent retail and e-commerce company, is looking for a senior, hands-on AI and Machine Learning specialist to lead the development of production-grade AI solutions across multiple domains such as trading, merchandising, pricing, promotions, allocation, replenishment, and customer behavior. This contract role demands full ownership of projects—from data discovery and modeling to deployment and driving business adoption. The successful candidate will work closely with cross-functional teams including trading, merchandising, e-commerce, finance, and engineering to deliver impactful AI-driven outcomes.

Key Responsibilities
Build a comprehensive data foundation by integrating diverse datasets including product, pricing, promotions, sales, inventory, returns, availability, and customer/channel information. Design and validate demand forecasting models at various granularities—covering product, channel, market, and time—with confidence intervals and rigorous backtesting. Develop decision models that optimize buying, allocation, replenishment, markdowns, promotions, assortment, and inventory management. Provide explainable AI recommendations that clearly communicate rationale, confidence levels, expected impact, and key drivers to stakeholders. Create reproducible training and inference pipelines that incorporate CI/CD practices, model registration, and ongoing monitoring. Transition pilot projects into secure, reliable, and monitored production services. Mentor engineers and analysts, while thoroughly documenting architecture, assumptions, and limitations to ensure knowledge transfer and maintainability.

Required Qualifications
A minimum of 8 years of experience in technology roles with strong, hands-on expertise in both data engineering and data science is essential, as this role requires proficiency across both areas. Proven success in delivering AI/ML solutions within retail, fashion, marketplaces, or e-commerce environments is required. Deep knowledge of retail data structures—including SKU/variant hierarchies, sales, stock levels, availability, returns, pricing, promotions, channels, and seasonality—is critical. Proficiency in Python and SQL is mandatory, along with experience in time-series forecasting, causal and promotional analysis, optimization techniques, and evaluation of models using business-relevant metrics. Hands-on experience with Snowflake and Microsoft Fabric platforms is expected. Strong MLOps skills including cloud services, APIs, containerization, CI/CD pipelines, and monitoring are necessary. The ability to communicate complex technical trade-offs clearly to senior business stakeholders is important. Candidates must demonstrate success working independently within remote, cross-functional teams. A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, AI/ML, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related field is required.

Preferred Qualifications and Additional Details
Experience in fashion, footwear, or multichannel retail sectors is advantageous. Familiarity with platforms such as Shopify, ERP/OMS, Product Information Management (PIM), Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), or Business Intelligence (BI) tools is a plus. Knowledge of Large Language Models (LLM), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), or AI agents applied to enterprise use cases will be beneficial. Experience designing decision cockpits or human-approval workflows for operational AI systems is preferred.

This is a contract role requiring onsite presence. Candidates should be prepared to discuss a retail or e-commerce AI solution they have personally designed and delivered end-to-end, covering data architecture, modeling, deployment, governance, and measurable business impact. A practical technical assessment may be part of the selection process. The position is based at the client’s location and requires in-person attendance.