Senior Applied Scientist, Afresh
Store Solutions
$156.1-231.1k
+ meaningful early-stage equity
More information about location
SaaS for grocery store operations
Open for applications
SaaS for grocery store operations
101-200 employees
Open for applications
$156.1-231.1k
+ meaningful early-stage equity
More information about location
101-200 employees
Company mission
To eliminate food waste and make fresh food accessible to all.
Role
Who you are
- MS or PhD in Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or another quantitative field, or equivalent practical experience
- For candidates with an MS, 4+ years of industry experience; for candidates with a PhD, some industry experience preferred
- Experience researching and building systems that support large-scale decision making under uncertainty
- Prior experience or academic knowledge in areas such as inventory optimization, supply chain management, network optimization, forecasting, game theory, decision analysis, stochastic optimization, approximate dynamic programming, or related fields is a plus
- Excellent communication and presentation skills. You should be able to explain complex mathematical ideas to product teams in plain English and easily translate business requirements into constrained optimization problems
- Ability to independently deliver high quality software implementations of your solutions in the Python data stack (numpy/torch/pandas/etc). Prior experience with Python is not required
- Nice to Have skills: understanding of ML Platform and a passion for mentorship
What the job involves
- We are looking for a Staff Applied Scientist to lead R&D work at Afresh. You will take your existing knowledge of machine learning, forecasting, operations research, and stochastic optimization and apply it to the challenging and important problem of perishable inventory control.
- You will research, implement, and rigorously validate improvements to our core replenishment system. This will include modeling consumer demand, item-level perishability, and complex multi-echelon supply chains. Your work will be visible from day one, will make a substantial impact on decreasing food waste, and will lead to fresher, healthier produce for millions of people across the world
- Set technical direction for core replenishment R&D — define the modeling roadmap across demand forecasting, inventory optimization, and decision-making policy, and align it with product and business strategy
- Model complex problems such as inventory decay, promotions, price elasticity, and inventory uncertainty, and implement solutions to multi-stage and multi-echelon inventory optimization problems
- Drive fundamental changes to our core system from research through production, writing rigorously tested and scalable code — we are not an analytics team
- Lead research and development for new product and business challenges
- Raise the technical bar across the Intelligence team: mentor scientists and engineers, set standards for experimental rigor, and review designs and results
- Push the boundaries of AI capabilities in both products and scientist workflows
Our take
Outdated inventory systems remain a major issue for grocers, particularly when it comes to fresh food. Many still rely on manual processes or rigid software that struggles to account for constantly changing factors like demand, shelf life and supply fluctuations. The result is over-ordering, wasted food and unnecessary costs, all problems that become even harder to manage at scale.
Afresh is tackling this with an AI-powered platform built specifically for fresh food operations. Its system helps grocers forecast demand, manage inventory and make smarter ordering decisions across categories like produce, meat and bakery. What started as a replenishment tool has expanded into a broader operating system, supporting planning, buying and day-to-day decision-making across store teams.
The company has grown quickly too, now supporting more than 12,000 grocery departments across North American and partnering with major retailers like Albertsons, Meijer and Wakefern. Following a year of strong growth and new product launches, Afresh is expanding its reach across the food supply chain, with ambitions that go beyond the store level. As pressure mounts on grocers to reduce waste and improve margins, Afresh is ready to be a key player in bringing AI-driven decision-making to the entire fresh food ecosystem.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
6% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Apr 2026
$34m
LATE VC
Aug 2022
$115m
SERIES B
Total funding: $181.8m
Company benefits
- Comprehensive health plans
- Generous parental leave
- Equity packages
- 401k matching
- Flexible vacation policy
- Professional development program
- Work from home stipend
Company HQ
Yerba Buena, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Matt Schwartz
(Co-Founder & CEO)Prior to co-founding Afresh in 2016, Matt worked as a Consultant for Bain & Company.
Nathan Fenner
(Co-Founder & CPO)Nathan has a Bachelors, Masters and MBA from Stanford University. Post studying, they became a Lecturer at Stanford in the Mechanical Engineering department before working at Liquid Robotics for 5 years.
Kristina Kemmer
(CTO)Kristina joined Afresh in 2023 as a Senior VP of Engineering, moving into the role of CTO in 2025. Prior to Afresh, she spent 4 years at Zapier as a Director/VP of Engineering and 2 years at InVision as an Engineering, then Senior Engineering Manager.
Adam Litle
(CRO)Prior to joining Afresh in 2025, Adam was the CEO of Sound Agriculture for over 5 years. He also served as the CRO at Granular for nearly 3 years and worked as a VP of Sales at Monetate for 1 year.
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