Senior Data Scientist II - Growth, Marketing & Sales - Retail

About the position

You will work with our Periscope Retail and CPG solutions teams to drive analytical innovation while also engaging clients & McKinsey consulting teams with in-project expert leadership. You will have the opportunity to drive industry defining innovation and apply that innovation to client situations where you can further refine and scale your ideas. Founded in 2007, Periscope by McKinsey enables better commercial decisions by developing in-house analytical approaches and software to uncover actionable insights for our clients. The Periscope platform combines world leading intellectual property, prescriptive analytics, and cloud-based tools focused on B2C, CPG, and B2B commercial excellence, including pricing, promotions and assortment. Periscope experts work closely with clients to embed these solutions into operational IT environments and work closely with McKinsey's Marketing & Sales consultants to transform client business processes to deliver revenue growth both now and in the future. To learn more about how Periscope's solutions and experts are helping businesses continually drive better performance, visit http://www.periscope-solutions.com. McKinsey's Periscope is helping to shift our Marketing & Sales Consulting model toward asset-based consulting and is a foundation for, and expands our investment in, our entrepreneurial culture. Through innovative software-as-a-service solutions, strategic acquisitions, and a vibrant ecosystem of alliances, we are redefining what it means for clients to work with McKinsey for Growth. As a Senior Data Scientist and Analytics Product Owner for Retail clients, your role will include a broad set of responsibilities to drive internal data science and product development teams, along with client facing roles across the following topics.

Responsibilities

• Focus on Innovation Leadership and help drive an innovation agenda for CPG Analytics across sciences, talent and tools by defining analytics use cases and aligning with a partner stakeholder group on the prioritization.
• Contribute to the roadmap for analytical code innovation, including bringing in additional analytical features, use of alternative modeling or AI/ML approaches and automation of Analytics at scale.
• Drive and oversee some of the key architectural decisions as they relate to Analytics, from modeling to forecasting to optimization.
• Evaluate the benefits and risks of alternative modeling platforms and technologies, and make recommendations for future use.
• Provide Expert Leadership in Client Projects through engaging directly with clients and consulting teams to bring expertise to the specific engagement.
• Work with consulting teams to shape analytics approach, review data sciences insights, and help finalize client facing recommendations to optimize impact of insight.
• Develop client specific recommendations on project approach and draw from insights across clients to support proposal phases.
• Coach clients, consulting team members and Periscope leads to drive knowledge and adoption of analytical best practices for the greatest impact.

Requirements

• Advanced degree in applied math, economics, statistics or other quantitative science.
• 5+ years of experience in the field of consulting and/or development, retail pricing or promotional management with experience in practical data analysis.
• Experience with advanced analytics techniques to model, forecast, and optimize decisions, particularly in pricing and promotions; includes econometric modeling, ML modeling techniques XGBoost and decision trees, and use of a Solver for optimization.
• Experience developing analytical solutions for internal or external usage.
• Advanced knowledge in statistical packages and comfort working with teams that make heavy use of Python and R.
• Experience in collaborating with a team of statistical analysts.
• Comfortable with ambiguity; self-motivated with strong sense of ownership.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills that can be employed when partnering with client and other partners in order to build relationships and achieve goals.
• Ability to critically evaluate and communicate business issues/risks with conviction to client and partners.
• Ability to think and act with a focus on the holistic needs of the client and influence others to do the same.
• Analytical and strategic focus, with ability to drive exploration and draw conclusions from multiple data sources.
• Highly proficient at problem-solving challenging business issues with client and McKinsey consultants.
• Ability to juggle overlapping and frequent challenging commitment timelines and reprioritize as necessary to meet evolving business objectives.
• Ability to display empathy and leadership with clients and colleagues.