Head of Applied Science

Rohlik is the leading Central European e-grocer. More than a million customers shop with us across Rohlik.cz, Knuspr.de, Kifli.hu, Gurkerl.at, and Sezamo.ro, choosing from over 20,000 items delivered within hours in 15-minute windows.

Behind every order is a continuous stream of automated decisions: how much inventory to buy for each warehouse, how many pickers to schedule on Thursday morning, where in the warehouse a product should sit, and which van carries which bags. Our models make these choices every day across five countries. When a forecast is accurate, shelves stay full and waste is minimized. When a plan is right, warehouses run on exact labor needs and orders arrive precisely in the customer’s chosen window. Get it wrong, and it immediately translates into shrink, overtime, tied-up capital, and missed customer deliveries.

Why this role is exciting

• Direct operational and business impact: Your team’s models directly drive availability, shrink, fulfillment costs, and working capital across all five markets.

• True ownership with zero friction: We operate automated production pipelines with no committee between your team and deployment—a solid backtest is all you need to ship.

• Unification of two core capabilities: You will bring Forecasting and Optimization into a single function, building an end-to-end decision-making ecosystem from the ground up.

• AI-first environment: Our engineers use AI coding agents (Devin, Claude Code) daily, and we expect you to push the boundaries of modern agentic workflows and tooling.

• Direct executive exposure: Reporting directly to the Group CTO, you will have the mandate and space to shape technical strategy and execution.

What you will own and deliver

• Business outcomes: Own the business results delivered by the forecasting and optimization portfolio, setting targets with cell leads and tracking financial and operational impact in production.

• Strategic roadmap & prioritization: Define which decisions to automate next across purchasing, fulfillment center planning, workforce scheduling, and commercial optimization (promotions, markdowns, demand shaping).

• Technical standards & architecture: Set the bar for problem framing, method selection, fast production MVPs, honest evaluation/backtesting against business metrics, and reliability monitoring.

• Function unification & leadership: Merge Forecasting and Optimization into one high-performing team; set hiring standards, develop ML engineers and applied scientists, and foster an AI-first way of working.

• Cross-functional partnership: Partner closely with cell leads, operations managers, product owners, and engineering leads to align on business metrics, baselines, and seamless system integration.

What we are looking for

• Track record of impact: 8+ years applying machine learning, forecasting, or operations research to real operational or commercial problems, with clear metrics demonstrating business results.

• Works backwards from outcomes: A proven habit of defining target metrics first, selecting the simplest effective method, shipping fast MVPs, and iterating in production.

• Hands-on technical depth: Experience building and shipping production models in time-series/probabilistic forecasting or mathematical optimization (LP, MIP, CP, heuristics, simulation), with enough depth to review models and judge when simple heuristics beat complex models.

• Technical skills: Fluency in Python and SQL; hands-on experience with production pipelines, monitoring, and backtesting; familiarity with modern forecasting stacks or solvers (Gurobi, CPLEX, OR-Tools).

• Operational fluency: Experience working directly alongside supply chain, warehouse, or logistics operations, including spending time on the floor to understand problems before framing models.

• Leadership & communication: Proven experience leading technical teams, hiring top talent, developing engineers, and translating complex model mechanics into business trade-offs for executives.

• AI-first mindset: Active use of coding agents and modern AI tooling in your daily workflow, driving the same approach across your team.

• Quantitative background: M.S. or Ph.D. in Operations Research, Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or equivalent hands-on experience.

Nice to have:

• Experience in e-commerce, grocery, supply chain, or logistics at scale.

• Experience building or scaling a forecasting, optimization, or decision-science function from an early stage.

• Experience feeding probabilistic forecasts directly into optimization models.

• Experience with GCP, Snowflake, or BigQuery, and ML platforms such as ZenML or Vertex AI.

What’s in it for you

• Fair reward - You’ll get a strong fixed salary, no bonus games, no politics. Great work is rewarded clearly and fairly.

• Good food every day - You’ll enjoy a free lunch every day and fresh fruit & veggies in the office. Because good food fuels great work.

• Life, not just work - You’ll have real flexibility three days in the office, 2 days at the Home Office where it suits you. And unlimited paid vacation based on trust.

• Personal growth - You’ll grow as fast as Rohlik does. Every challenge is a chance to learn and make an impact.

• Real impact - What you do here matters. You’ll see your work changing how people eat and live from day one.

• Recognition among colleagues - Your effort won’t go unnoticed. You can recognise others (and be recognised) through peer credits to use in our internal cafeteria.

• Xtra membership - You’ll get free Xtra membership and 10% cashback on everything you buy on Rohlik.cz.

• Sport & wellbeing - You’ll stay active with company sports challenges or a subsidised Multisport card.

• A team that sticks together - You’ll work with people who move fast, support each other and celebrate wins together.

• If this sounds like you - You’re someone who takes ownership, acts fast and gets things done. Ready to bake something great with us?