Staff Data Scientist

Walmart

Lead Data Scientist responsible for pricing strategy and optimization solutions at Walmart. Collaborate with teams to enhance pricing models and drive business decisions through data analysis.

Posted 5/12/2026full-timeSunnyvale • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $110,000 - $220,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

PythonPyTorchTensorflow

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

You will lead the scientific design and end-to-end execution of high-frequency pricing systems that balance competitive positioning with long-term margin health.
Design and deploy prescriptive ML models to address high-impact pricing and markdown needs, ensuring alignment with Walmart’s Global Tech strategy and EDLP integrity.
Perform elasticity analysis across large data sets and category segments to empower data-driven pricing decisions.
Own the E2E Price Recommendation lifecycle, including scoping, feature engineering, causal modeling, experimentation (A/B testing), and ongoing performance optimization.
Develop advanced pricing and optimization solutions using: Causal Inference & Elasticity, Optimization & Reinforcement Learning, Deep Learning, and Uncertainty Quantification.
Build explainable pricing systems: Provide model interpretability and stakeholder-facing narratives on "why" a price recommendation was made.
Establish strong evaluation and monitoring: Backtesting against historical price changes, drift detection, and calibration of price-response curves.
Drive best practices in AgentOps: Build Agentic workflows to enable chat-based price explainability and "what-if" scenario planning for Merchants.
Collaborate and Mentor: Partner with Product, Business, and Engineering to set technical direction and mentor the next generation of MLEs.

Requirements

What you’ll need

8+ years in Data Science / Applied ML (or PhD + 5 years), with deep hands-on exposure to pricing, elasticity, or causal modeling.
Demonstrated experience delivering production-grade optimization models with measurable financial outcomes (e.g., Margin lift, Inventory turnover).
Strong knowledge of pricing dynamics: Seasonality, competitor indexing, promotional impact, regime changes, and price-point psychology.
Hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks (PyTorch or TensorFlow) and modern architectures for decision-focused AI.
Practical experience with Explainable AI (XAI) and communicating complex model reasoning to non-technical business stakeholders.
Excellent coding skills in Python; strong grasp of software engineering fundamentals (testing, CI/CD, MLOps).

Benefits

Comp & perks

Beyond our great compensation package, you can receive incentive awards for your performance.
Other great perks include 401(k) match, stock purchase plan, paid maternity and parental leave, PTO, multiple health plans, and much more.
Health benefits include medical, vision and dental coverage.
Financial benefits include 401(k), stock purchase and company-paid life insurance.
Paid time off benefits include PTO (including sick leave), parental leave, family care leave, bereavement, jury duty, and voting.
Other benefits include short-term and long-term disability, company discounts, Military Leave Pay, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, and more.

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

machine learningcausal modelingelasticity analysisoptimizationreinforcement learningdeep learningexplainable AIPythonA/B testingfeature engineering

Soft Skills

collaborationmentoringcommunicationstakeholder engagementleadership