Staff Data Scientist, Revenue Management Systems
Job Summary:
Viking is hiring a Staff Data Scientist to provide technical leadership for our Revenue Management System (RMS), shaping pricing and inventory optimization models while helping set broader data science strategy. This role sits within the Yield Management team and works in close partnership with Technology, Data Engineering, and business stakeholders to ensure models are effective, explainable, and aligned with revenue goals.
This is a hybrid position based in our Woodland Hills, CA office. You will be required to adhere to our hybrid work policy, working from our office Monday and Thursday plus one additional weekday on a weekly basis.
Job Responsibilities:
- Provide technical leadership for RMS analytics, including demand forecasting, cancellations, pricing optimization, and recommendation logic, in close partnership with Yield, Engineering, and MLOps teams.
- Evolve model quality and reliability by refining features, constraints, and business rules; reducing edge‑case behavior; improving monitoring and responsiveness; and ensuring models remain trusted and actionable.
- Drive adoption and measurable business impact by collaborating with Technology to expand product coverage, ensure recommendations are usable in tools, and evaluate yield uplift versus control groups.
- Lead high‑value experimentation by defining hypotheses, evaluation frameworks (e.g., offline testing, shadow tests, guardrails), and safe production trials, with clear promotion and rollback paths.
- Embed with pricing and inventory stakeholders to translate strategy into model logic, explain recommendation drivers, and communicate results in clear, business‑focused terms.
- Partner closely with Data Engineering and DevOps to ensure models are production‑ready, reliable, and scalable, including healthy pipelines, retraining orchestration, and strong deployment practices.
- Apply pragmatic judgment in selecting solutions, using rules or heuristics where signal strength, data availability, or explainability make them more effective than ML.
- Maintain clear, concise documentation and explainability artifacts that support analysts, stakeholders, and long‑term system sustainability.
Job Requirements:
- 6+ years of experience delivering production-grade, commercially impactful ML solutions.
- Preferred experience in pricing, forecasting, or inventory optimization within travel or hospitality
- Expert proficiency in Python and SQL, with experience in Spark, Databricks, and modern production ML environments
- Strong foundation in constrained optimization, experimental design, time-series modeling, causal inference, and interpretable ML techniques.
- Proven success shipping ML capabilities into user‑facing tools in partnership with engineering and business owners.
- Exceptional communication skills with the ability to explain complex concepts simply and defend methodological choices.
What We Offer You:
- Highly competitive compensation plan.
- Salary range $200,000-$240,000 annually determined by a myriad of factors including, but not limited to, years of experience, depth of experience, and other relevant business considerations.
- Employees are eligible for annual discretionary bonus.
- 401(k) plan with company match.
- Employee Share Purchase Plan (ESPP) Viking full-time regular employees working in the United States can purchase Viking shares through payroll deductions.
- Full benefits including medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance at a highly subsidized rate (some plans are fully paid by Viking).
- Accrue 15 paid vacation days, sick time accrual by state, and 6 paid holidays per year.
- Opportunity to take a free and/or discounted cruise.
- Highly subsidized gym membership.
- Discounts on theatres, theme parks, movie tickets, travel discounts through IATA membership and too many more discounts to name.
Viking is a certified Great Place to Work company. This certification is a result of our commitment to excellence, integrity and our teams’ outstanding contributions.
About Viking
Viking (NYSE: VIK) is a global leader in experiential travel with a fleet of more than 100 ships, exploring 21 rivers, five oceans and all seven continents. Designed for curious travelers with interests in science, history, culture and cuisine, Chairman and CEO Torstein Hagen often says Viking offers experiences For The Thinking Person™. Viking has more than 450 awards to its name, including being rated #1 for Rivers and #1 for Oceans five years in a row by Condé Nast Traveler in the 2025 Readers’ Choice Awards. Viking is also rated a “World’s Best” by Travel + Leisure—no other travel company has simultaneously received such honors by both publications.
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