Principal Data Scientist – Demand Forecasting & AI

Principal Data Scientist – Demand Forecasting & AI

Remote role

Rate is $80/hr., all-inclusive

Position Overview

Seeking a senior, hands-on Principal Data Scientist with deep experience in demand forecasting within large-scale manufacturing environments. This role will support the design and development of an advanced forecasting solution that integrates data from multiple enterprise sources to determine finished-product production requirements by product/model.

The ideal candidate combines strong manufacturing forecasting expertise with advanced data science, AI/ML, solution design, and hands-on prototyping skills.

Key Responsibilities

• Gather and translate business forecasting requirements into technical designs and solutions
• Design forecasting models focused on finished products and product/model-level production requirements
• Integrate and analyze data from multiple enterprise sources, such as SAP, Salesforce, multiple ERP/CRM points.
• Apply statistical forecasting, machine learning and AI techniques to improve forecast accuracy and capabilities
• Design and build functional prototypes from initial requirements through testing
• Perform hands-on development, validation and unit testing
• Leverage Generative AI/LLM technologies where applicable, including MCP and RAG
• Integrate enterprise data with LLM-based applications and forecasting solutions
• Communicate designs, findings and recommendations to business and technical stakeholders

Required Qualifications

• 15+ years of relevant experience in data science, forecasting, advanced analytics, AI/ML and related disciplines
• Significant hands-on experience designing and developing demand forecasting solutions
• High-tech manufacturing or consumer technology product experience (think: handheld telecom manufacturing devices, such as: apple, tmo, etc.)
• Strong manufacturing experience with an emphasis on finished-goods/product forecasting
• Experience working within large, complex enterprise environments
• Strong knowledge of demand forecasting, production planning and related supply-chain processes
• Advanced statistical modeling, machine learning and predictive analytics experience
• Experience working with SAP and data from multiple enterprise systems
• Ability to independently assess requirements and develop technical solution designs
• Strong hands-on development, prototyping, testing and unit-testing experience
• Strong business and technical communication skills

Highly Preferred

• AI/ML-based demand or production forecasting experience
• Generative AI and LLM application development experience
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) experience
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) experience
• Experience integrating enterprise data sources with LLMs
• Experience with model training, fine-tuning and/or grounding

Ideal Candidate

A senior practitioner who developed deep forecasting expertise within a sophisticated, large-scale manufacturing organization and can operate across business requirements, solution architecture and hands-on development. This is not a purely advisory role. The successful candidate must be able to understand the forecasting problem, design the solution, build a working prototype, and test the solution independently.

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Pay: $70.00 - $80.00 per hour

Work Location: Remote