Principal Data Scientist

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.

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.

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