Sr Data Scientist Search Relevance Zoro at Zoro

Company Summary: 
Zoro offers millions and millions of products — an endless aisle with everything you need to run your business. We offer fast and free shipping, no-hassle returns, and exceptional customer service. We’ve grown quickly in a short time and are continuing to do so while aggressively growing our revenue. We are excited to be a part of an award-winning culture — we have been named a Great Place to Work for multiple years in a row, among other local and national accolades. We think Zoro is a pretty amazing place to work and grow, and think you will too!
Position Description:
Are you ready to take on the technical challenges of a very successful and fast-growing eCommerce company backed by an industry leader? At Zoro, we are transforming from a scrappy startup into an eCommerce juggernaut, and we want your talent to help us get there. That means there are plenty of opportunities to get hands-on with transformative work which make an impact each and every day.
Zoro’s Technology Group is embarking on an exciting journey to build an in-house search platform, which will be one of the core technologies that separates us from our competitors. We want to develop a platform that is tailored to Zoro’s product assortment and specific user needs so that customers can easily navigate our 10M+ products to find what they need.
Our team is responsible for providing Zoro customers with relevant search results by effectively combining ElasticSearch capabilities, data science models, and technology solutions. We’re looking for an experienced Senior Data Scientist who understands search engines such as ElasticSearch and/or Solr. As a member of the Search team, you’ll be an integral part of a talented, cross-functional group that will build and operate dynamic and scalable systems powering a core functionality of our customer experience.
You will collaborate with other data scientists and analysts to solve complex information retrieval problems using NLP, predictive modeling, deep learning and more. You will also work closely with software engineers and product managers to address business priorities and integrate solutions into the broader search platform. Your experience, your knowledge and your perspective will add value on our journey and help the team deliver products that make a difference.
Our product teams deliver constant improvements to zoro.com. You will be on a high performing scrum team with approximately 2-3 data scientists, 4-6 software engineers as well as a dedicated tech lead, product owner, and architect.
Responsibilities:
Lead the configuration of ElasticSearch queries, algorithms and analyzers based on internal data structures and customers’ search patterns
Have experience working in information retrieval technologies, ingest pipelines, and indexing layers
An understanding of relevance engineering (experience with Elasticsearch, Solr and/or Lucene is a plus) and relevance tuning
Develop solutions involving NLP, product retrieval and ranking to serve our customers with relevant results
Tune application performance by investigating the slow performing requests and analyzing the resource utilization of the application infrastructure
As a senior data scientist, you’ll be expected to contribute to standards that improve developer workflows, recommend best practices, and help mentor junior team members to grow their technical expertise
Comfortable working in a collaborative, ambiguous, fast-paced and dynamic work environment to help solve complex problems
Expected to work effectively with engineers, product managers, data scientists, analysts and business stakeholders
Produce clean, high-quality code, tests, and well written documentation
Participate in code and design reviews with peers and partners
Qualifications:
Degree in Computer Science, Data Science, a related technical or scientific field, or equivalent experience
5+  years experience as a data scientist
Experience of Information Retrieval and/or Natural Language Processing
Strong preference given to candidates with demonstrated domain knowledge in eCommerce Search and Recommendations technologies
Experience with Search platforms such as Solr and ElasticSearch, including configuration and schema optimization
Experience of software development in Python
Experience using Docker and/or Kubernetes, Istio
Experience working with web applications, web services, and/or APIs at scale
Experience with large-scale data processing
Zoro Values and Inclusive Culture:  
We share a commitment to our Zoro values – Win & Lose Together (We prefer winning!), Take Ownership, We Are Transparent, and Aspire to be Customer-Obsessed. Everything we do at Zoro is centered around delighting our customers. It's a natural extension of our company culture and how we care for each other. We believe when we act in ways that are consistent with these values, we can solve any technical challenge that lies ahead of us. As a Zoro employee, you can expect to work with smart, energetic people, learn something every day, and be valued for your perspective.
Zoro is dedicated to fostering an environment where people of all backgrounds and beliefs are represented, and all team members can be confident that their experiences and perspectives are valued. Zoro aims to empower all employees to learn about, raise awareness, and promote diversity and inclusion through all of our workplace interactions. Zoro is a place where everyone can learn, grow and thrive.
We recognize the courage and effort it takes to apply for your next opportunity. We also recognize that there is rarely such thing as a perfect candidate. Even if you do not meet every qualification, we still encourage you to apply -- we do not want to miss out on meeting the next person who could emerge as a key contributor to our business and culture.
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Zoro is an Equal Opportunity Workplace and an Affirmative Action Employer.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status.