Canadian Tire

Senior ML/AI Engineer

Canadian Tire$64K — $106K *
Retail & Consumer Goods
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • B.S or M.S in Computer Science, Statistics, Math, Engineering, or related field; PhD is a plus.
  • 3+ years of experience with production machine learning solutions, particularly in retail or loyalty programs.
  • Expertise in Python for production-grade ML code development.
  • 4+ years querying and analyzing large datasets, with proficiency in SQL and PySpark.
  • Solid understanding of recommender systems and large-scale ranking techniques.
  • Rigorous experience with offline evaluation methods and time-respecting data practices.
  • Familiarity with deep learning frameworks and cloud ML platforms, Vertex AI preferred.

Responsibilities

  • Develop a comprehensive understanding of our Retail business and Loyalty program mechanics.
  • Design offline evaluation frameworks with success criteria for predictive analytics.
  • Research and apply appropriate modeling methodologies for diverse business challenges.
  • Build and optimize feature engineering processes using PySpark on extensive datasets.
  • Design and manage the ML platform layer to streamline model retraining cycles.
  • Implement agentic AI solutions to automate and improve model performance.
  • Lead analytical pipeline optimization across various data sources for scalability.
  • Enhance team engineering standards through mentorship and code reviews.

Benefits

  • Comprehensive benefits and retirement programs
  • Performance incentives and Continuing Education Programs
  • Additional perks to promote employee well-being
  • Opportunities for career advancement and product discounts
Full Job Description
What You'll Do:
  • Develop a deep understanding of our Retail business, Loyalty program, and how personalized offers are composed and delivered across our retail banners.
  • Design and deliver offline evaluation frameworks with explicit success criteria - ranking metrics, held-out AUC, time-respecting splits, and point-in-time correctness - so that an offline win reliably predicts online lift.
  • Research and apply modelling methodology to select (and justify) the right approach for a given business problem, from matrix factorization and two-tower retrieval to learning-to-rank and sequential architectures.
  • Build and optimize large-scale feature engineering in PySpark over hundreds of millions of transaction records, with the profiling skills to know why a job is shuffling.
  • Design and operate our ML platform layer - feature store, reproducible training pipelines, and cloud training job submission - so retraining is cheap and routine rather than a project.
  • Design and implement agentic AI solutions that automate model improvement - extending our in-house harness where an AI agent proposes changes, scores them against a locked benchmark, and keeps only what measurably helps, under human review.
  • Lead optimization and orchestration of end-to-end analytical pipelines across multiple data sources and modelling workstreams to ensure scalability and production reliability.
  • Raise the engineering standard of the team through code review, documentation, and mentorship of engineers working adjacent to the model layer.


What You Bring:
  • B.S or M.S, preferably in Computer Science/Statistics/Math/Engineering or a related quantitative discipline. PhD an asset.
  • 3+ years experience developing and deploying machine learning solutions in production - owning data, training, evaluation, release, and operational support. Experience in retail, loyalty programs, personalization, or ad-tech ranking preferred.
  • Expert-level Python, writing production-grade ML code rather than notebooks handed off for deployment.
  • 4+ years of experience querying and analyzing large datasets with tools such as SQL and Spark, with demonstrated depth in PySpark.
  • Demonstrated experience with recommender systems or large-scale ranking, and the judgment to know which technique a problem actually requires.
  • Rigorous approach to offline evaluation - including train/validation splits that respect time, point-in-time correct feature construction, and leakage you have personally found and fixed.
  • Experience with deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow) and gradient boosting libraries such as LightGBM or XGBoost.
  • Production experience with a major cloud ML platform - Vertex AI preferred; SageMaker or Azure ML acceptable - including custom training jobs, artifact management, and cost control. Familiarity with BigQuery and cloud-based data structures is an asset.
  • Experience designing and orchestrating multi-stage analytical pipelines with workflow optimization, preferably Apache Airflow at production scale.
  • Familiarity with agentic AI architectures, LLM-based solutions, and working fluently with coding agents is a strong asset. Infrastructure-as-code experience (Terraform) and cloud IAM familiarity is an asset.
  • Excellent oral and written communication skills, with the ability to communicate both technical and business concepts, as well as strong presentation skills.
  • Demonstrated ability to work independently with minimal supervision, effectively navigating and resolving ambiguous problems and situations.


Location: Toronto, Ontario (Hybrid: In-office 4 days a week)

We're always looking for great talent! In addition to competitive pay, we offer:
  • Comprehensive benefits and retirement programs
  • Performance incentives, Continuing Education Programs
  • Other perks to support your well-being
  • Career growth opportunities and product discounts


Broadband Salary Range: $64,000 - $106,000.
Our typical hiring range is between $64,000 and $85,000. Salary decisions are also dependent on other factors such as your experience, industry benchmarks, internal equity and other role-specific requirements. For critical roles, the compensation offering will be reviewed to ensure alignment with market rate and conditions and the unique value you bring to the role.

#LI-AK1

This posting represents an existing vacancy within our organization.

We may use artificial intelligence tools as part of our recruitment process to assist in the initial screening of resumes. All hiring decisions, including candidate evaluation, selection, and disposition, are made by human recruiters.

About Canadian Tire

Canadian Tire Corporation, Limited is a Canadian retail company which sells a wide range of automotive, hardware, sports and leisure, and home products. Some stores also sell toys and food products. It operates through a network of more than 1,700 retail and gasoline outlets across Canada. The company was founded in 1922 and is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario.
Learn more about Canadian Tire
Size
13,435 employees
Industry
Founded
1922
NASDAQ

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