Machine Learning Specialist

Advanced Model Developer For Row Crops

This person will design, develop, and deploy advanced models that drive innovation and data-driven decision-making to assist breeding and testing efforts for row crops. This role will focus on building predictive models that integrate genetic, environmental, and phenotypic data to accelerate plant breeding and agronomic insights. This position will work closely with geneticists, plant scientists, and data engineers to develop algorithms that translate raw data into actionable insights for corn breeding, envirotyping, and yield forecasting.

Responsibilities

• Interact cooperatively with corn breeding, biotechnology laboratory and phenomics staff to facilitate an efficient and effective modern breeding program.
• Support breeding programs with predictive models for yield, drought tolerance, or disease resistance.
• Build, optimize and maintain scalable ML pipelines for preprocessing, training, deployment, and monitoring.
• Work with cross-functional teams to understand business challenges and translate them into machine learning solutions.
• Collect, preprocess, and analyze large-scale structured and unstructured datasets.
• Monitor model performance, retrain as needed, and ensure fairness, robustness, and interpretability.
• Implement machine learning and other modern statistical techniques in conjunction with rest of computational genomics team.
• Stay up to date with the latest ML/AI research, tools, and frameworks, and recommend innovative approaches.
• Communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical shareholders.
• Anticipate and propose technological updates and capital needs well in advance.
• Perform other related duties as may be required by Beck's management.

Job Requirements

Education and training:

• BS required, MS or PhD preferred in statistics, data analytics, computer science, mathematics, plant breeding, genetics, animal science (or related discipline)
• Must possess and maintain a valid driver's license and insurable driving record as determined by Beck's automobile insurance policy.

Skills:

• Thorough understanding of analytical tools such as Python, R, SQL, or similar.
• Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, and software engineering principles.
• Practical experience with deep learning, reinforcement learning, decision trees, or language models.
• Practical experience developing and deploying production level code with full documentation.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Possess a positive attitude.
• Ability to establish priorities, work independently or on a team, and proceed with objectives without supervision.

Experience:

• Three (3) years of experience in a machine learning or data analytic role preferred