About The Role

Merchandising Data Science builds the systems — both automated decision engines and decision support systems — that drive high-stakes merchandising decisions: how we select and curate items, manage space, plan and allocate inventory, flow inventory through the network, decide what and how much to buy, read the competitive landscape, and price. As a Staff Data Scientist, you own a single, hard problem end-to-end — not an abstract domain, but a specific question like "how do we estimate price elasticities better?", "how do we reduce forecast error for seasonal items a year out?", or "how do we incorporate all constraints at DC outbound so the planned flow can actually be executed, exceptions and all?" Depending on the problem, the answer is a system that decides automatically, or one that gives a merchant or planner the right recommendation, tradeoff, and evidence to decide well. You take the problem from a rough business question to a exact formulation to a production system, and you make sure it keeps getting better even on the days you're not in the room.



You are an individual contributor with no direct reports — your leverage comes from raising the judgment and standards of the people working alongside you on that problem, not from personal output alone.

What you'll do

Own one hard, well-defined problem end-to-end — e.g., "how do we estimate price elasticities better?" or "how do we reduce forecast error for seasonal items a year out?" — from rough business question to precise formulation to production system.

Define what a good answer looks like: decision variables or recommendation logic, objective function, constraints, fallback behavior, and measurable success criteria.

Decide whether the problem calls for a fully automated decision engine or a decision support system that augments a human decision-maker, and design accordingly.

Choose and implement the right solution approach — optimization, heuristics, simulation, forecasting, causal/s

📌 PRINCIPAL, DATA SCIENTIST (Bengaluru)
🏢 Walmart Global Tech
📍 Bengaluru