Senior Data Scientist

About Zipline

Zipline is a well-funded, rapidly growing SaaS company transforming how frontline teams work. We empower the world’s leading brands across retail, healthcare, logistics, and beyond to connect, align, and inspire their employees—from headquarters to the front lines. Our customers consistently give us best-in-class NPS and CSAT scores, and they rave about how Zipline makes their teams’ lives easier and their businesses more effective. We’re also a fully remote company, with passionate employees across the U.S., Canada, and around the globe.

About Role

Zipline is seeking an experienced Senior Data Scientist to drive the development of advanced machine learning and AI solutions that power customer-facing features in our retail SaaS platform. This role will focus on end-to-end ownership of the ML lifecycle—from problem definition and model design to deployment and ongoing optimization. As a senior member of the Data Science team, you will work closely with Product, Engineering, and Business stakeholders to translate ambiguous problems into clear data science solutions, leveraging NLP, LLMs, and classical ML techniques to deliver measurable business impact. You will help shape Zipline’s product and play a critical role in scaling intelligent, data-driven products across our platform.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy end-to-end ML models that power customer-facing features, using techniques across NLP, generative AI, and traditional machine learning.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to translate business problems into well-defined ML problems, ensuring solutions are robust, explainable, and impactful.
• Own the full model lifecycle: data exploration, feature engineering, model design, training, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance.
• Build and maintain scalable pipelines and APIs for model inference and integration into production systems.
• Collaborate with Product Managers and Engineers to deliver production-ready ML features that enhance customer experience and operational efficiency.
• Apply modern NLP and LLM methodologies (e.g., text embeddings, summarization, retrieval-augmented generation) to improve communication and content understanding in retail workflows.
• Participate in the deployment of the solutions, experimentation, and continuous model improvement.
• Communicate results and insights effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Stay ahead of trends in AI, ML, NLP, and LLMs to continuously evolve Zipline’s technical capabilities.
• (Optional) Explore reinforcement learning (RL) techniques where applicable to optimization problems.

Must Haves

• 6+ years of experience as a Data Scientist, with demonstrated expertise in designing and deploying production ML systems.
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL.
• Deployment stack experience (e.g., AWS, GCP, Docker, MLflow, FastAPI, Vertex AI, etc.).
• Deep understanding of NLP and LLM techniques and frameworks (e.g., Hugging Face, LangChain, PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Proven experience taking models from concept to deployment—defining business problems, designing models, and delivering production-ready solutions.
• Familiarity with ML Ops practices, including model deployment, versioning, monitoring, and retraining.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences, including executives and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong problem-solving skills and a track record of delivering results independently and collaboratively.
• A passion for innovation and using data science to create tangible impact in real-world applications.

What’s in it for you:

• Remote-first culture: Join a high performing, fully remote team and work where you’re comfortable.
• Stock Options: Get meaningful ownership in a fast-growing, venture-backed company shaping the future of retail.
• Time Off: Our flexible time-off policy ensures you stay refreshed and recharged. Plus, you’ll get a monthly stipend to get you out of the house—grab a coffee and work from your favourite spot!
• Benefits: World-class medical, dental, and vision policies.
• Team Connection: Annual company off-sites in fun locations. We’ve done New York, Costa Rica, Whistler, Palm Springs, San Diego, and Mexico City.
• Sabbatical: A one month paid sabbatical after completing five years of working at Zipline.
• Volunteering: Every quarter, Zipliners get a paid day off to volunteer for a nonprofit of their choice.
• Learning: We support continuous learning and provide unlimited access to our Udemy Business account.
• Great humans, great work: Work with kind, collaborative teammates who care about doing meaningful work and making a real impact. We value diversity of all kinds and are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace where we learn from each other.

We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome people of all different backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives.

Want to learn more about how we work? We may be remote, but we’re anything but disconnected. Zipliners work from all over—vans, boats, Airbnbs, and everything in between. No office? No problem. Our culture still feels like one big hug. Even though we’re distributed, we make space to connect—whether it’s our weekly all-company social or gathering in person at our yearly retreats. We’re building something meaningful together, and we’re glad you’re considering being a part of it. We can’t wait to meet you!

How We Hire

We use AI tools to support our recruitment process, including helping us organize applications and identify early matches based on role criteria. That said, every rejection decision is made by a human. We encourage candidates to apply authentically and avoid relying solely on AI-generated responses, especially during interviews. This posting is for a current, open position within Zipline. This opportunity is offered through HighlightTA, the on-demand talent team supporting Zipline's growth.