Lead Data Scientist

Job Role - Sr. / Lead Data Scientist

Job Location - Pune (Hybrid)

Experience - 10+ Years

About the Role

Williams-Sonoma is seeking an experienced Lead Data Scientist to join our Data & AI organization and help drive intelligent decision-making across our retail and digital ecosystem. This role sits at the intersection of advanced analytics, machine learning, and emerging AI capabilities, with a strong focus on translating data into measurable business impact.

The ideal candidate brings deep hands-on expertise in applied data science and machine learning, along with the ability to lead complex initiatives end-to-end from problem framing and experimentation to production deployment. You will partner closely with product, merchandising, marketing, supply chain, and engineering teams to deliver scalable, data-driven solutions that enhance customer experience and operational efficiency.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of advanced analytical and machine learning solutions to solve high-impact business problems across retail and e-commerce domains.
• Apply statistical modeling, predictive analytics, and experimentation to generate actionable insights that inform business strategy and decision-making.
• Perform deep exploratory data analysis (EDA) on large, complex datasets and clearly communicate findings to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Partner with business leaders, product managers, and engineering teams to define analytical objectives, data requirements, and success metrics.
• Mentor and provide technical leadership to data scientists and ML engineers, fostering best practices in modeling, experimentation, and production readiness.
• Architect, optimize, and maintain scalable data science workflows and feature pipelines using Spark and other big-data technologies.
• Collaborate with ML and platform teams to operationalize models, ensuring reliability, performance, and monitoring in production environments.
• Evaluate and continuously improve deployed models through performance tracking, retraining strategies, and post-launch analysis.
• Stay current with emerging trends, tools, and best practices in data science, machine learning, and applied AI, and assess their relevance to retail use cases.
• Contribute to team standards, code reviews, documentation, and knowledge sharing to raise the overall data science maturity of the organization.

Criteria:

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of experience in data science, machine learning, or advanced analytics roles, with demonstrated impact in production environments.
• Strong proficiency in Python and common data science libraries (NumPy, Pandas, Scikit-learn), with experience in at least one deep learning framework (TensorFlow or PyTorch).
• Solid experience with big-data and distributed computing technologies such as Spark and Hadoop.
• Hands-on experience working with cloud-based data platforms and modern data ecosystems.
• Deep understanding of statistical methods, machine learning algorithms, feature engineering, and model evaluation techniques.
• Proven strength in exploratory data analysis, data storytelling, and translating analytical insights into business recommendations.
• Experience leading projects, influencing stakeholders, and mentoring junior team members.
• Prior experience in retail, e-commerce, or consumer-focused businesses is highly desirable.
• Excellent problem-solving, communication, and collaboration skills, with the ability to explain complex concepts to diverse audiences.