Data Scientist

About the role

Takealot is South Africa’s largest e-commerce platform. The Data Scientist role joins the Group Data Science team supporting marketplace search, recommendations, pricing, supply chain, or marketing. Application deadline 15 August 2026.

Responsibilities

• Build and deploy machine learning models in production (search ranking, recommendations, demand forecasting, price optimisation).
• Partner with engineering teams to integrate models into Takealot products.
• Define experiment metrics and lead A/B tests for model improvements.
• Communicate model performance and trade-offs to product and business stakeholders.
• Contribute to the team’s MLOps and feature-store infrastructure.

Requirements

• Three or more years of professional data science or machine learning engineering experience.
• Strong proficiency in Python and standard ML libraries (scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow, XGBoost).
• Hands-on experience deploying models to production through pipelines (SageMaker, Vertex AI, MLflow, Airflow).
• Strong SQL skills and comfort with large datasets.
• Excellent written and verbal communication in English.

Nice to have

• Masters or PhD in Computer Science, Statistics, or related quantitative field.
• Prior experience at an e-commerce, marketplace, or marketing technology platform.
• Open source contributions or published research.

How to apply

Open the Takealot Group careers page at the apply link, search for “Data Scientist”, and apply through the Takealot recruitment portal. CV review, technical assessment, hiring manager interview, and panel interview with data science leadership follow. Closing date 15 August 2026.