Principal Data Scientist (Carlsbad)

BICP, a San Diego-based consulting firm focused in AI & Data is seeking an experienced Principal Data Scientist to work embedded with a leading apparel and lifestyle brand, partnering closely with its AI, product, engineering, and business teams. We’re looking for someone with strong retail/apparel experience and a proven track record applying data science to demand planning, forecasting, and merchandising decisions. You should be comfortable moving from an ambiguous business problem to a production solution and demonstrating how that solution improves business performance.

This is a hands-on individual contributor role with technical leadership and mentoring responsibilities. Success requires curiosity, sound judgment, and the ability to listen closely, challenge assumptions constructively, and build trust with business stakeholders.

What You’ll Do

• Lead data science initiatives across demand forecasting, demand planning, inventory optimization, merchandising, and assortment planning.
• Partner directly with planners, merchants, and other business teams to understand their workflows, decisions, constraints, and measures of success.
• Assess existing data, forecasting methods, and business processes to identify gaps and prioritize opportunities with measurable value.
• Build and improve models that account for retail/apparel dynamics such as seasonality, promotions, product launches, product lifecycles, and differences across channels and locations.
• Translate complex analysis into clear recommendations that business stakeholders can understand and act on.
• Build confidence in model outputs by making data inputs, assumptions, calculations, performance, and limitations understandable.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to move solutions from experimentation into production, monitor performance, and drive adoption.
• Influence priorities and challenge requests when a different approach would better address the underlying business need.
• Adapt as priorities evolve while maintaining momentum and accountability for outcomes.
• Mentor other data scientists and strengthen the team’s analytical and technical practices.

What You’ll Bring

• 8+ years of relevant data science or applied machine learning experience, with demonstrated Principal-level ownership and impact.
• Direct retail/apparel experience and substantial hands-on experience in demand planning and forecasting.
• A track record delivering production forecasting or optimization solutions that improved business decisions and measurable outcomes.
• An understanding of how forecasts inform merchandise buying, assortment, inventory, and replenishment decisions.
• Strong Python, SQL, statistical modeling, machine learning, and time-series forecasting skills.
• Experience working with complex data sources and assessing data quality, suitability, and limitations.
• The ability to evaluate forecasting performance using both technical metrics and business impact.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, including experience earning adoption from nontechnical business teams.
• Experience collaborating with product managers, data engineers, and software engineers to operationalize models.
• The ability to work independently in an evolving environment while coaching others.
• Additional Experience That Would Be Valuable
• Consumer analytics, customer segmentation, or personalization.
• Experimentation, causal inference, and optimization.
• Cloud data and machine learning platforms.
• Experience embedding directly with business teams to deliver data science solutions.

What Success Looks Like

You quickly learn the business and its planning environment, identify where data science can improve decisions, and deliver solutions that people trust and use. You bring technical depth, but you measure success through better planning, stronger adoption, and measurable business results.

About BICP

BICP is a San Diego-based AI & Data consulting firm that helps organizations close the gap between strategic priorities and the specialized capabilities required to execute them. Our Forward Deployed practitioners work alongside client teams, bringing deep expertise across AI/ML, Data, Analytics, Product, and Architecture to move initiatives from idea to implementation, production, and measurable business impact.