Principal Data Scientist

Pleasanton

**Why choose us?** **Are you ready to take the next step in your career? Join us for an exciting opportunity at Albertsons Companies, where innovation and customer service go hand-in-hand!** At Albertsons Companies, we are looking for someone who's not just seeking a job, but someone who wants to make an impact. In this role, you'll have the opportunity to lead, innovate, and contribute to the growth of a company that values great service and lasting customer relationships. This position offers the chance to work in a fast-paced, dynamic environment that's constantly evolving. **Bring your flavor** Building the future of food and well-being starts with you. Join our team and bring your best self to the table. The position will be based in Pleasanton, CA. **Main Responsibilities** * Lead the design and development of end-to-end deep learning solutions, from problem formulation and model architecture selection through deployment and continuous optimization within the Databricks Lakehouse platform. * Serve as the technical authority for Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), graph representation learning, and advanced deep learning architectures, driving innovation and adoption across high-impact business problems. * Architect scalable machine learning and deep learning platforms, establishing reusable frameworks, standards, and best practices for model development, deployment, and lifecycle management. * Define and implement robust evaluation, explainability, and model governance frameworks to ensure model quality, transparency, and business impact. * Lead the development and optimization of distributed training, large-scale data processing, and inference systems using Spark and modern AI infrastructure. * Drive the fine-tuning, adaptation, and product ionization of foundation models, large language models (LLMs), and other advanced AI architectures leveraging enterprise data assets. * Partner with Data Science, Engineering, Product, and Business leaders to translate strategic opportunities into scalable AI solutions that deliver measurable value. * Influence AI strategy, technical roadmaps, and architectural decisions while mentoring senior practitioners and advancing organizational AI capabilities. **Required Qualifications** **Education** * PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Operations Research, or a related quantitative field strongly preferred. * Master's degree with exceptional equivalent industry research and leadership experience may be considered. **Experience** * 12 plus years of experience developing and deploying machine learning and deep learning solutions in production environments. * 8 plus years of experience leading advanced deep learning research, experimentation, and enterprise-scale implementation efforts. * Demonstrated experience operating as a Principal Scientist, Principal AI Engineer, Distinguished Engineer, Research Lead, or equivalent senior technical individual contributor. **Technical Expertise** **Deep Expertise In** * Deep Learning * Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) * Graph Representation Learning * Graph Embeddings * Knowledge Graphs * Graph Transformers * Foundation Models and LLMs **Expert-level hands-on proficiency in PyTorch and/or TensorFlow.** **Extensive Experience Building Large-scale Distributed Machine Learning Solutions Using** * Apache Spark * PySpark * Databricks Lakehouse * Delta Lake * MLflow * Unity Catalog * Expert knowledge of model training, optimization, serving, and lifecycle management across distributed GPU environments. * Proven experience designing enterprise-grade inference systems balancing accuracy, latency, reliability, scalability, and operational cost. * Advanced proficiency in Python and machine learning ecosystems including NumPy, Pandas, Scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow, and related frameworks **Research \& Thought Leadership** * Strong publication record in leading machine learning, artificial intelligence, graph machine learning, or data science conferences and journals. * Proven track record translating advanced research into measurable business outcomes. * Demonstrated technical leadership through patents, publications, conference presentations, open-source contributions, or recognized industry thought leadership. **Preferred Qualifications** **Deep expertise in advanced graph learning architectures including:** Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) GraphSAGE Graph Attention Networks (GATs) Heterogeneous Graph Neural Networks Temporal Graph Networks Graph Transformers * Experience building and deploying LLM, generative AI, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), multimodal AI, and agentic AI solutions. * Experience operating large-scale AI platforms on AWS, Azure, and/or Google Cloud Platform. * Experience with Ray, Kubernetes, Docker, Nvidia CUDA ecosystem, Triton Inference Server, and distributed GPU infrastructure. * Experience designing streaming inference architectures using Kafka, Structured Streaming, and real-time decisioning systems. * Experience leading enterprise AI transformations across multiple business units. * Background in retail, e-commerce, supply chain, customer intelligence, recommendations, fraud detection, network optimization, or large-scale graph applications. * Recognized industry subject matter expert with demonstrated influence beyond immediate organizational boundaries * We also provide a variety of benefits including: * Competitive wages paid weekly * Access to up to 50% of your earned wages before payday, via our partnership with Stream * Associate discounts * Health and financial well-being benefits for eligible associates (Medical, Dental, 401k and more!) * Time off (vacation, holidays, sick pay). For eligibility requirements please visit myACI Benefits * Leaders invested in your training, career growth and development * An inclusive work environment with talented colleagues who reflect the communities we serve **Our Values -- Click below to view video:** ACI Values *A copy of the full job description can be made available to you.*