Director, Data Science

About the Position

At Chewy, we believe great work starts with great people. Our mission is to be the most trusted and convenient destination for pet parents and partners everywhere. Advertising is a core growth engine for Chewy-and science is how we make it smarter for shoppers, brands, and the business.

We are hiring a Director, Data Science to own and lead all Ads Data Science for Chewy-fully accountable for the science strategy and production implementation behind Chewy’s onsite and offsite Chewy Ads.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of data scientists building the intelligence layer across the full advertising marketplace.
• Define and execute Chewy Ads’ AI / GenAI strategy, including LLM-powered workstreams.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to ship production systems that improve shopper relevance, advertiser ROI/ROAS, and Ads business performance.
• Establish rigorous experimentation and decision frameworks so science investments map clearly to customer and revenue impact.
• Represent Ads science to senior leadership-translating complex work into clear strategy, tradeoffs, and recommendations.

Requirements

• Advanced degree (M.S., PhD, or equivalent experience) in a quantitative field (e.g., CS, ML, Statistics, OR, Applied Math, Data Science), or 10+ years building and leading large-scale ML/optimization systems.
• Proven experience leading data scientists / applied scientists and owning end-to-end science delivery in production-ideally in ads, search, recommendations, personalization, or marketplace systems.
• Deep hands-on fluency with modern ML for ranking and prediction at scale: deep learning, embeddings, retrieval, multi-objective optimization, and online experimentation.
• Experience with advertising optimization systems spanning supply and demand-auctions, real-time bidding, pacing, budget allocation, keyword/bid recommendations, auto-campaign optimization, and ROAS optimization under real-time, constrained-spend settings.
• Demonstrated experience productizing LLMs / generative AI in real systems (e.g., RAG, agentic workflows, evaluation harnesses, quality/safety controls)-ideally in ads, search, or ecommerce.
• Strong foundation in mathematics, statistics, and scientific method; a high bar for model quality, causal measurement, and production reliability.
• Experience operating distributed training/serving pipelines and partnering with Engineering on scalable deployment.
• Exceptional communication: able to influence senior executives and cross-functional partners with clarity and technical credibility.

Nice to Have

• Direct experience in digital advertising / retail media / sponsored products.
• Ecommerce or retail marketplace experience.
• Experience with cloud ML platforms (e.g., AWS SageMaker or equivalent) and modern GenAI tooling.
• Track record of hiring and developing senior scientific talent.

We Offer

• Competitive salary range: $198,500 - $300,000.00.
• Comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance, 401(k) with company matching, paid time off, employee discounts, and additional wellness and support programs.
• 401k and new hire and annual equity grant.
• Unlimited PTO for exempt salary team members, subject to manager approval.
• Six paid holidays per year.
• Eligibility for paid sick and family leave in compliance with applicable state and local regulations.

About the Company

Chewy is an e-commerce company in the pet industry that empowers pet parents to make smarter decisions about products for their pets. They are focused on customer service technology and are seeking a Software Engineer III (AI/ML) to contribute to their AI platform. Chewy values innovation, collaboration, and mentoring, and is committed to equal opportunity and diversity. They have a strong engineering team and prioritize the development of large-scale AI/ML models. Chewy is a high-profile company with a commitment to providing excellent customer service and improving the pet ownership experience.