Senior Applied Machine Learning Scientist

Work Location Type:Remote

About Grainger:

W.W. Grainger, Inc., is a leading broad line distributor with operations primarily in North America, Japan and the United Kingdom. At Grainger, We Keep the World Working by serving more than 4.5 million customers worldwide with products and solutions delivered through innovative technology and deep customer relationships. Known for its commitment to service and award-winning culture, the Company had 2024 revenue of $17.2 billion across its two business models. In the High-Touch Solutions segment, Grainger offers approximately 2 million maintenances, repair and operating (MRO) products and services, including technical support and inventory management. In the Endless Assortment segment,Zoro.comoffers customers access to more than 14 million products, andMonotaRO.comoffers more than 24 million products. For more information, visitwww.grainger.com.

Compensation

The anticipated base pay compensation range for this position is$121,500.00 to$202,500.00.

Rewards and Benefits:

With benefits starting on day one, our programs provide choice and flexibility to meet team members' individual needs, including:

• Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance plans with coverage starting on day one of employment and 6 free sessions each year with a licensed therapist to support your emotional wellbeing.
• 18 paid time off (PTO) days annually for full-time employees (accrual prorated based on employment start date) and 6 company holidays per year.
• 6% company contribution to a 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan each pay period, no employee contribution required.
• Employee discounts, tuition reimbursement, student loan refinancing and free access to financial counseling, education, and tools.
• Maternity support programs, nursing benefits, and up to 14 weeks paid leave for birth parents and up to 4 weeks paid leave for non-birth parents.

For additional information and details regarding Grainger's benefits, please click on the link below:

https://experience100.ehr.com/grainger/Home/Tools-Resources/Key-Resources/New-Hire

The pay range provided above is not a guarantee of compensation. The range reflects the potential base pay for this role at the time of this posting based on the job grade for this position. Individual base pay compensation will depend, in part, on factors such as geographic work location and relevant experience and skills.

The anticipated compensation range described above is subject to change and the compensation ultimately paid may be higher or lower than the range described above.

Grainger reserves the right to amend, modify, or terminate its compensation and benefit programs in its sole discretion at any time, consistent with applicable law.

Position Details:

Grainger's Product Discovery team seeks a seasoned Senior Applied ML Scientist to drive cutting-edge generative AI solutions. Our goal is to streamline operational efficiency and facilitate seamless customer experiences. At the heart of our mission, "We Keep the World Working," lies the crucial role of Product Discovery, which enables our customers to find what they need, when they need it. Our innovative solutions enable customers to navigate through product categories effortlessly, discover premium products tailored to their needs, and access the most pertinent information, empowering them to make informed purchasing decisions confidently. The preferred location is hybrid in Chicago, IL, but we will also consider highly qualified remote candidates.

• Design, build, deploy, and maintain advanced machine learning models ensuring they are scalable, efficient, and impactful
• Utilize a broad array of technologies including NLP, LLMs, and computer vision to enhance Grainger's product discovery experience
• Work closely with other ML scientists, engineers, and product managers to integrate your models into Grainger's platforms, contributing to a cohesive product discovery journey.
• Keep abreast of the latest developments in machine learning and related technologies, applying cutting-edge research and methodologies to your work
• Work backward from customer use cases, engender implementation of ML models that solves the use cases at scale
• Articulate concepts and generate visual representations of your work and the impact it creates
• Share your knowledge and expertise with team members, fostering an environment of learning and growth within the Product Discovery team

• Work with a team of product managers, data scientists, data engineers and architects to build targeted products that help customers solve and answer specific problems.
• Contribute to the strategic planning and direction of our ML initiatives, ensuring they align with business objectives and drive value

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in the industry delivering ML solutions.
• Master's or PhD degree in a field such as Applied Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• Proficiency in programming with Python and SQL, with the ability to rapidly prototype ideas and refine them towards production.
• Experience with deep learning frameworks and transformer-based models (e.g., BERT, GPT, T5) using frameworks such as PyTorch, Jax, TensorFlow, Keras, along with libraries like Hugging Face and Sentence-Transformers.
• Experience with usage of text embeddings to build semantic search and improve relevancy of search systems
• Strong understanding of large language models (LLMs) and their applications in processing product information and customer behavioral data to enhance search and recommendation capabilities.
• Experience deploying models to the cloud using Docker and Kubernetes and automating data augmentation and refresh with Airflow and Bash scripting.
• Exposure to architectural patterns of high-scale, low-latency software applications (e.g., well-designed APIs, high-volume data pipelines, efficient algorithms, and models).
• Ability to effectively communicate technical solutions to engineering teams and business audiences.

Preferred:

• Hands-on experience with Information Retrieval (IR) systems, including semantic, keyword-based search, hybrid search and relevance ranking.
• Experience with multimodal machine learning, combining text and image embeddings for tasks such as product discovery, search ranking, and recommendation.
• Experience optimizing inference speeds of models via quantization, distillation or other means when served as endpoint
• Experience with multilingual NLP (for translation tasks) and handling challenges like domain adaptation, multilingual embeddings, and transfer learning for different languages.
• Experience building deep learning-based personalized recommendation systems.

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression, or veteran status. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.

We are committed to fostering an inclusive, accessible environment that includes both providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities during the application and hiring process as well as throughout the course of one's employment. With this in mind, should you need a reasonable accommodation during the application and selection process, please advise us so that we can provide appropriate assistance.

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