Real Estate Data Scienist
The Real Estate Data Scientist will report to the Manager of Real Estate Data Science. The Real Estate Data Scientist will help discover the information hidden in vast amounts of data and help make smarter decisions to open successful Harbor Freight stores through time in the field and at corporate. This individual’s primary focus will be applying data mining techniques, doing statistical analysis, and building high quality prediction systems to evaluate individual stores and markets. To be successful in this role, this individual will need a deep understanding customer data, advanced statistical modeling techniques and big data. In addition to data analysis, there will be time for visiting markets, performing additional project-based analyses, and department level reporting as required to facilitate Harbor Freight’s growth. Based upon successful performance in this role, this position can be a stepping stone to either further roles in real estate data science, real estate strategy, or a number of other highly analytical roles within the organization such as Data Analytics, Corporate Strategy, and Merchandising Finance to name a few.
Job Description :
The Real Estate Data Scientist will report to the Manager of Real Estate Data Science. The Real Estate Data Scientist will help discover the information hidden in vast amounts of data and help make smarter decisions to open successful Harbor Freight stores through time in the field and at corporate. This individual’s primary focus will be applying data mining techniques, doing statistical analysis, and building high quality prediction systems to evaluate individual stores and markets. To be successful in this role, this individual will need a deep understanding customer data, advanced statistical modeling techniques and big data. In addition to data analysis, there will be time for visiting markets, performing additional project-based analyses, and department level reporting as required to facilitate Harbor Freight’s growth. Based upon successful performance in this role, this position can be a stepping stone to either further roles in real estate data science, real estate strategy, or a number of other highly analytical roles within the organization such as Data Analytics, Corporate Strategy, and Merchandising Finance to name a few.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
- Provide analytical support for various initiatives including, but not limited to:
- Modifying Harbor Freight’s existing site selection model by analyzing customer data and building a model that predicts sales per core customer, core customer capture, and trade area drive time.
- Digging into Harbor Freight’s customer through statistical modeling on demographic, SKU level and financial data to develop a customer profile known as a “core customer”.
- Monthly database mining to provide insight on customer behavior by region/market/SKU etc. for various departments.
- Understand the demand potential for incremental stores as well as risk inherent in brand’s growth strategies for individual targets and at the market level.
- Pro forma P & L and investment analysis for prospective sites.
- Leverage time spent in the field to better understand risk around particular markets and refine the customer definition/model.
- Various reporting requirements on trade areas and customer information.
- Assist with the development and implementation of national demographic market planning and site evaluation systems and processes.
- Be a key participant in the Real Estate Committee process for trade area and site information, whether it be preparing all material or presenting to the Real Estate Committee.
- Help drive consensus between Directors of Real Estate and Real Estate Strategy on which locations to prioritize for Harbor Freight Tools.
- Participate in cross functional adhoc projects ranging from understanding underperforming regions, to how changes in company strategy impact where we open stores to better educating business partners on the impact of opening stores to name a few and present results in a clear manner.
- Additional duties as assigned
Requirements :
Education and/or Experience:
- A Bachelors degree (Masters preferred) from a nationally recognized institution with outstanding academic credentials in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Economics, or similar.
- Direct experience in real estate strategy or 3+ year experience in Data Analytics, CRM or Inventory Forecasting with the majority of that experience in an analytical role.
- Familiarity with retail and/or consumer products experience preferred.
- Excellent understanding of machine learning techniques and algorithms, such as k-NN, Naïve Bayes, SVM, Decision Forests, etc.
- Good applied statistics skills such as distributions, statistical testing, regression, etc.
- Experience with common data science toolkits such as R, or Python. Excellence in at least one is highly desirable.
- Great communication skills.
- Experience with data visualization tools such as Tableau or PowerBI preferred.
- Proficiency in using query languages like SQL.
- Considerable experience with Microsoft Office (advanced Excel and intermediate Access and PowerPoint skills) and other financial software / systems.
- Superior analytical and quantitative skills, particularly in strategic business and financial analysis, driven by an intellectual curiosity to understand and explain relationships in data.
- Strong ability to translate data from different sources and distill analyses into clear action plans.
- Experience in CRM, Market Planning, Site Selection, and Market optimization preferred.
- Experience with traveling for work on a frequent basis.
- Experience and comfort working in a fast-paced business environment with ability to consistently meet tight deadlines.
- Self-directed individual able to adapt quickly to changes in priorities and business conditions.
- Team attitude and approach to work.
Physical Requirements:
- General office environment, ability to sit for long periods of time. Ability to move about an office.
- Often travel may be required to see potential HFT locations and markets where existing stores are currently open.
Scope:
- Staff supervision and development — no
- Decision making - see examples above
- Travel – 20%
- Location—Remote
- Must be able to perform this job safely in accordance with standard operating procedures and good manufacturing practices, without endangering the health or safety of self or others
Safety:
- Must be able to perform this job safely in accordance with standard operating procedures and good manufacturing practices, without endangering the health or safety of self or others