Sr Manager of AI and ML - Staples

Exciting opportunity - Senior Manager of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning:

Location: Framingham MA, hybrid role 3days a week in office mandatory:

Staples is business to business. You’re what binds us together.

Our digital solutions team is more than a traditional IT organization. We are a team of passionate, collaborative, agile, inventive, customer-centric, results-oriented problem solvers. We are intellectually curious, love advancements in technology and seek to adapt technologies to drive Staples forward. We anticipate the needs of our customers and business partners and deliver reliable, customer-centric technology services.

Join the Staples Enterprise Data & Analytics team as a Senior Manager of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, where you’ll play a pivotal role in designing and implementing state-of-the-art AI solutions for the growing data needs of our North American Delivery (NAD) organization. In this role, you’ll be responsible for defining the AI infrastructure, framework, and governance processes that will form the foundation for new AI capabilities, enabling the team to scale and manage operations efficiently. Your core ethos of providing AI-driven decision intelligence will advance and scale the enterprise to reach greater peaks consistently and sustainably.

As the senior leader of a team of highly skilled AI Engineers, Data Scientists, interns and contractors with varied experience levels, you’ll guide the development of AI models, generative AI solutions, and pipelines that organize, collect, and standardize data to generate insights and address business needs. Your team will be responsible for designing and implementing AI/ML models, developing tools for real-time and batch analytics processing, and integrating AI solutions into existing data frameworks. You’ll also oversee the integration of data from a variety of sources, ensuring that it adheres to data quality and accessibility standards.

In this role, you’ll be responsible for planning and reviewing the work of your associates through code reviews and participating in scrum events and other Agile ceremonies. This is a fantastic opportunity to make a real impact on the future of Staples and drive innovation in our retail ecommerce enterprise.

Responsibilities:

• Strategic Leadership: Drive the design and implementation of end-to-end AI solutions, leveraging various frameworks and tools to meet organizational goals.
• Innovation and R&D: Lead research and development initiatives, staying abreast of the latest advancements in AI/GenAI, exploring novel applications, and developing proof-of-concept projects.
• Solution Architecture: Define and oversee the high-level architecture and technical requirements of AI solutions, ensuring scalability, reliability, security, and performance.
• Model Selection and Optimization: Guide the selection and fine-tuning of pretrained GenAI models (e.g., GPT-4, LLaMa) for specific tasks, including text generation, image creation, and code synthesis.
• Data Strategy: Oversee data exploration and preparation, ensuring high-quality data sets for training and evaluation of GenAI models, and addressing potential biases.
• Experimentation and Evaluation: Lead experiments to assess the performance of GenAI models, comparing different architectures and approaches to optimize outcomes.
• Integration and Deployment: Supervise the development and integration of GenAI models into existing or new applications, leveraging frameworks like LangChain for seamless orchestration.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Foster strong collaboration with data scientists, software engineers, product managers, and designers to bring GenAI solutions to life.
• Knowledge Sharing: Promote a culture of knowledge sharing by documenting findings, sharing best practices, and contributing to the team’s knowledge base.
• Performance Monitoring: Monitor and evaluate the performance and accuracy of AI solutions in production, ensuring continuous improvement.
• Issue Resolution: Identify and troubleshoot issues related to data quality, model drift, scalability, and reliability.
• Lifecycle Optimization: Optimize and automate the AI solution lifecycle using MLOps best practices.
• Thought Leadership: Provide thought leadership and guidance on best practices and methodologies for AI solution development and delivery.
• Team Orchestration: Orchestrate teams to deliver AI solution blueprints, ensuring alignment with strategic objectives and efficient execution.

Qualifications:

• Educational Background: Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field.
• Management and Technical Expertise: Extensive hands-on experience with platform MLflow and MLOps databricks features. Popular GenAI LLM models (e.g., GPT-4o, LLaMa, Mixtral), SLMs with Phi/Gamma/Triplex, and frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, PyTorch, and long-term memory with Mem0 or similar).
• Solution Design: Proven experience in designing and implementing end-to-end AI solutions using Python, PyTorch, and leveraging platforms like Databricks and Snowflake.
• Domain Knowledge: Strong knowledge of machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and other AI domains.
• Data Proficiency: Expertise in feature engineering, data preprocessing, model tuning, and evaluation.
• MLOps and Cloud Computing: Experience in cloud platforms (Azure, GCP) and their AI/ML services, MLOps, CI/CD, cloud computing, and containerization technologies.
• Soft Skills: Excellent communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to work independently and in a team environment.
• Professional Experience: 7+ years of experience in AI/ML, with a strong focus on Generative AI.
• Technical Skills: Deep understanding of NLP, deep learning, and data analysis techniques, with strong programming skills in Python and experience in data manipulation libraries (e.g., Pandas, NumPy).
• Innovation Mindset: Passion for innovation and a desire to explore the frontiers of AI.
• Vector Data Stores: Familiarity with vector data stores (e.g., FAISS, Qdrant, Azure Search, Databricks).

We Offer:

• Inclusive culture with associate-led Business Resource Groups
• Flexible PTO (22 days) and Holiday Schedule (7 observed paid holidays)
• Online and Retail Discounts, Company Match 401(k), Physical and Mental Health Wellness programs, and more perks and benefits