Staff Applied Scientist

DAT•Seattle, WA

1d•$210,000 - $310,000•Hybrid

About The Position

About DAT DAT is an award-winning employer of choice and a next-generation SaaS technology company that has been at the leading edge of innovation in transportation supply chain logistics for 45 years. We continue to transform the industry year over year, by deploying a suite of software solutions to millions of customers every day - customers who depend on DAT for the most relevant data and most accurate insights to help them make smarter business decisions and run their companies more profitably. We operate the largest marketplace of its kind in North America, with 400 million freights posted in 2022, and a database of $150 billion of annual global shipment market transaction data. Our headquarters are in Denver, CO, and Beaverton, OR, with additional offices in Seattle, WA; Springfield, MO; and Bangalore, India. For additional information, see www.DAT.com/company Job Application Deadline: 03/31/2025 The Opportunity DAT’s Convoy Platform team is seeking a Staff Applied Scientist to design and deploy the next generation of marketplace algorithms and intelligent decision systems that power the movement of freight across the nation. You will tackle some of the most challenging problems in digital logistics: matching supply with demand at scale, allocating resources efficiently under uncertainty, and building systems that can make and refine complex, high‑judgment decisions continuously as new information arrives. This is a hands‑on, end‑to-end science role where you will: Conceptualize, propose, implement and iterate on algorithms that optimize a dynamic two‑sided marketplace in real time Build decision engines that learn from feedback and guide operational and product outcomes Blend techniques from machine learning, optimization, and causal inference to deliver measurable marketplace improvements Take ideas from research to production, ensuring seamless integration into our operational systems You will be joining at a pivotal point in DAT’s transformation, bringing together Convoy’s industry‑leading technology with DAT’s scale and deep market presence to create the most advanced digital freight network in the country. The solutions you build will help move billions of dollars of freight more efficiently, reducing waste and increasing value for shippers, brokers, and carriers. You are someone who will As a Staff Applied Scientist, you will set technical direction, mentor other scientists, and deliver solutions whose impact scales across teams and the broader Convoy Platform, not just within individual projects. Drive smarter, data-informed decision-making through advanced Science features Whether you’re using collaborative filtering to generate highly personalized load recommendations, enhancing those recommendations with a conversational AI agent powered by LLMs to deliver actionable offers to carriers, or reimagining auction mechanisms and carrier engagement with multi-armed bandits, your mandate is to identify and apply the right algorithmic and data-driven approach to maximize the impact of every feature. You’ll drive innovation across the Convoy Platform, always seeking new ways for our systems to make smarter, faster, and more reliable decisions. Develop feedback-aware automated decision-making systems There are many situations where models simply do not outperform humans. We are looking for individuals who are open to building systems capable of ingesting human inputs. This means as part of the role, you will continuously analyze feedback from brokers and carriers to identify areas for improvement, fine-tune auction parameters, and optimize performance. Engage collaboratively Science drives automated decisions across many domains at the Convoy platform. We seek individuals with a history of leading successful collaborations with cross-functional teams, including product managers, engineers, and data scientists, to ensure seamless integration of the modeling solutions within the Engineering systems. Innovate Deliberately We’d like the individuals joining our team to stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in machine learning, optimization techniques, and market dynamics to drive innovation and maintain a competitive edge.

Requirements

Advanced Education: Ph.D. or MS in Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics/Operations Research, Engineering, or related quantitative field
Professional Experience: Minimum of 7+ years of experience developing and deploying machine learning solutions in production environments
Technical Proficiency: Expert-level proficiency with Python and production-grade machine learning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn), with hands-on experience in large language models (LLMs), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and modern natural language processing (NLP) toolkits
Systems Experience: Demonstrated ability to build, deploy, and monitor both classic and generative AI models in real-world systems, with comfort working with APIs, microservices, and data pipelines
Problem-Solving Aptitude: Proven track record of translating ambiguous business problems into automated, scalable decision-making tools with a bias for action and operational excellence

Nice To Haves

You have experience with two-sided marketplaces, financial markets, and economic theory
You have built and maintained mature production ML models in large, complex systems
You have applied foundational or cutting-edge research, especially in NLP, LLMs, reinforcement learning, or optimization, to unlock real-world business value
You have experience in freight, logistics, or transportation technology

Responsibilities

Drive Market Mechanism Innovation: Enhance our industry-leading auction mechanism to better match broker loads with carriers, tackling dynamic pricing, marketplace fairness, and efficiency at scale
Develop AI-Powered Customer Experiences: Build and deploy next-generation AI products, including LLM-driven text and voice interfaces, enabling customers to interact more naturally through chat, voice assistants, and automated workflows
Build Risk & Trust Systems: Create robust fraud detection and risk management models to maintain the safety and integrity of our network
Design Recommendation Systems: Deliver intelligent load recommendations, using Convoy and DAT’s rich user behavior data. Test, learn and iterate with multi-armed bandits.
Embrace our Experimentation and Causal Inference Obsession: Design and analyze experiments to accurately measure the impact of new features and pricing strategies across our marketplace
Set Technical Direction: Mentor other scientists and deliver solutions whose impact scales across teams and the broader Convoy Platform
Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Lead successful collaborations with product managers, engineers, and data scientists to ensure seamless integration of modeling solutions within engineering systems
Stay Current with Innovation: Maintain expertise in the latest advancements in machine learning, optimization techniques, and market dynamics to drive innovation and maintain competitive edge