Senior Data Scientist

Viking River Cruises is seeking a highly skilled and innovative Data Scientist to join our Advanced Analytics team. Reporting to our Director, Advanced Analytics you will play a pivotal in driving data-driven decision-making and enhancing customer engagement across all channels. Our ideal candidate will have a strong background in predictive modeling, personalization engines, and cross-functional collaboration.

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:

• Design, build, and refine predictive models to optimize customer engagement across digital and offline channels.
• Define, iterate, and implement a dynamic Next Best Action (NBA) engine to deliver personalized recommendations aligned with booked passenger goals and preferences.
• Ensure the integrity and accuracy of data through rigorous testing and validation of models.
• Apply advanced statistical and machine learning techniques to understand customer behavior and campaign performance.
• Wrangle, process, cleanse, verify, and enrich data from different sources used for analysis and modeling.
• Proven experience with data analytics, feature engineering, and building end-to-end ML pipelines
• Familiarity with fine-tuning and applying Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT, LLaMA, or Claude for NLP and generative tasks
• Familiarity with vector databases and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines
• Experience integrating AI/ML models into secure or cloud-hosted environments
• Translate complex data into actionable insights to support strategic initiatives across sales, marketing, and operations.
• Develop and maintain dashboards and reporting tools to monitor model performance and business impact.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to identify opportunities for data-driven enhancements and integrating predictive models into customer-facing platforms
• Develop best practices in model governance and deployment.

Job Requirements:

•  Master’s or Ph.D. in Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science, or related fields.
•  8+ years of relevant experience in predictive modeling, machine learning, and personalization systems.
• Proficiency in Python, R, SQL, cloud-based platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure), data platforms like Databricks and ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or Scikit-learn
• Experience with recommendation systems, NBA frameworks, and customer journey analytics.
• Understanding of software engineering foundations — including clean code practices, testing, version control, and CI/CD workflows.
• Comprehensive understanding of the ML lifecycle, from experimentation to model development and deployment.
• Strong communication skills and ability to present technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred Skills:

• Background in travel and hospitality
• Familiarity with tools like Power BI
• Knowledge of customer segmentation, lifecycle modeling, and A/B testing.

What We Offer You:

·        Highly competitive compensation plan.

o   Salary range $200,000 - $240,000 annually determined by a myriad of factors including, but not limited to, years of experience, depth of experience, individual qualifications and other relevant business considerations.

o   Employees are eligible for annual discretionary bonus.

o   401(k) plan with company match.

o   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 was founded in 1997 and provides destination-focused voyages on oceans, rivers and lakes around the world. Designed for experienced travelers with interests in

science, history, culture and cuisine, Chairman Torstein Hagen often says Viking offers   experiences for The Thinking Person®.

Viking has more than 250 awards to its name, including being rated #1 for Rivers, #1 for Oceans and #1 for Expeditions by Condé Nast Traveler and voted at the top of its

categories by Travel + Leisure. No other cruise line has ever received these same honors by both publications at the same time.