About the role

Lead R&D as a Staff Applied Scientist at Afresh, leveraging AI for grocery inventory control solutions. Your work will greatly impact food waste reduction and enhance food quality.

Responsibilities

Set technical direction for core replenishment R&D — define the modeling roadmap across demand forecasting, inventory optimization, and decision-making policy, and align it with product and business strategy.
Model complex problems such as inventory decay, promotions, price elasticity, and inventory uncertainty, and implement solutions to multi-stage and multi-echelon inventory optimization problems.
Drive fundamental changes to our core system from research through production, writing rigorously tested and scalable code — we are not an analytics team.
Lead research and development for new product and business challenges.
Raise the technical bar across the Intelligence team: mentor scientists and engineers, set standards for experimental rigor, and review designs and results.
Push the boundaries of AI capabilities in both products and scientist workflows.

MS or PhD in Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or another quantitative field, or equivalent practical experience.
For candidates with an MS, 8+ years of industry experience; for candidates with a PhD, 4+ years of industry experience.
Experience researching and building systems that support large-scale decision making under uncertainty.
Prior experience in areas such as inventory optimization, supply chain management, network optimization, forecasting, game theory, decision analysis, stochastic optimization, approximate dynamic programming, or related fields is a plus.
Excellent communication and presentation skills. You should be able to explain complex mathematical ideas to product teams in plain English and easily translate business requirements into constrained optimization problems.
Ability to independently deliver high quality software implementations of your solutions in the Python data stack (numpy/torch/pandas/etc). Prior experience with Python is not required.
Nice to Have skills: understanding of ML Platform and a passion for mentorship

Comprehensive Health & Wellness: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family, with the majority of premiums covered by Afresh. We also provide dedicated mental health support and counseling services.
Invested in Your Future: Competitive base salary, meaningful equity (U.S. employees), and a 401(k) program with a generous company match.
Flexible & Modern Workspace: Whether you work from home or a local office, we support your setup with a home office stipend and "Coworking Wallets" for flexible workspace access.
Growth-Obsessed Culture: We believe in continuous learning. Every employee receives an annual professional development budget to master new skills and grow their career at Afresh.
Holistic Monthly Stipends: Beyond your paycheck, we provide monthly stipends for "Betterment" (wellness/lifestyle) and telecommunications to ensure you have what you need to thrive.
Time to Recharge: Flexible paid time off to take the time you need to recharge.