Sr. Manager, Data Science - Pricing Algorithms

CarMax•Richmond, VA

18h•Onsite

About The Position

CarMax, the way your career should be! About the Team The primary responsibility for the Pricing team is to accurately and systematically value each individual car that we buy and sell. Last year, CarMax sold over 1 million vehicles and appraised over 2 million vehicles, and Pricing directed over $20B in spend to purchase inventory. To properly value these vehicles, our data scientists must develop algorithms that best reflect customer preferences for each vehicle’s unique characteristics and that effectively respond to constantly changing consumer demand, wholesale auction supply, and other global/local market conditions.

Requirements

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions
Undergraduate degree with exceptional academic performance in quantitative discipline (Statistics, Math, Data Science, Computer Science, Engineering).
Mathematical, modeling, and reasoning skills in order to build complex pricing models
4+ years experience in strategy, analytics and/or data science
Proven ability to deliver business value by leveraging deep analytic skills in order to solve complex business problems
Computer programming skills in order to turn the mathematical model into Artificial Intelligence
Leadership skills necessary to build a highly engaged team and to work cross functionally to implement new pricing strategies
Exceptional verbal, written, and listening skills necessary to (a) effectively manage their team, (b) listen and understand conflicting points of view on complex matters, (c) navigate through potential contentious situations that periodically occur in a change process, and (d) communicate complex ideas.
Experience managing highly analytical projects and people.
Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. Sponsorship will not be considered for this specific role.

Nice To Haves

Advanced Degree (Master’s/Ph.D.) is a plus.

Responsibilities

Develop optimal pricing strategies that meet both short and long term business objectives
Leverage exceptional business knowledge, creativity, vision and analytic skills in order to lead the development of optimal pricing strategies
Develop right optimization strategy given CarMax’s unique business model of selling a non-commodity product at a no-haggle price.
Leverage strong analytic communication skills to gain broad buy-in to pricing strategies and goals at all levels of the organization
Continuously improve our pricing strategy by delivering $10-25MM/yr of incremental value
Build a highly engaged team of 4-7 Data Scientists with the skills to implement our pricing strategies across hundreds of thousands of vehicles each year
Create a rewarding and challenging environment designed to teach uniquely gifted analytic professionals how to become effective, value adding data scientists
Leverage strong functional expertise in a quickly evolving field to ensure that team members have the right technology to meet today’s business needs.
Set specific, actionable short and mid-term goals for each team member
Challenge, develop & recognize team members when they achieve their goals
Lead the building of Artificial Intelligence to autonomously price every vehicle in an optimal way
Leverage strong mathematics, statistics and technology skills (machine learning, Python, etc.) in order to lead the development of sophisticated pricing models that autonomously implement our strategies
Leverage strong computer science and software engineering skills in order to build software that (a) Calculates the optimal value for each vehicle and (b) -Delivers that value to field associates in seconds
Lead cross functional efforts to implement new models with IT and the field
Apply exceptional experiment test and design skills in order to measure the business impact of different pricing changes
Develop and execute a management system that ensures the right value is put on every vehicle every day
Ensure that the model is tuned to current market conditions by identifying times when immediate strategy changes are needed (ex: gas prices spiking)
Build and execute a management system to ensure that the model is delivering intended values (alert system, regular review meetings…)
Quickly respond to and resolve pricing system issues regardless of time of day/week