Staff Software Developer, AI/ML

About Kinaxis
Elevate your career journey by embracing a new challenge with Kinaxis. We are experts in tech, but it's really our people who give us passion to always seek ways to do things better. As such, we're serious about your career growth and professional development, because People matter at Kinaxis.

In 1984, we started out as a team of three engineers. Today, we have grown to become a global organization with over 2000 employees around the world, with a brand-new HQ based in Kanata North in Ottawa. As one of Canada's Top Employers, we are proud to work with our customers and employees towards solving some of the biggest challenges facing supply chains today.

At Kinaxis, we power the world's supply chains to help preserve the planet's resources and enrich the human experience. As a global leader in end-to-end supply chain management, we enable supply chain excellence for all industries, with more than 40,000 users in over 100 countries. We are expanding our team as we continue to innovate and revolutionize how we support our customers.

*Location*
our offices in Ottawa and Toronto (Hybrid)

About The Team
The AI team is responsible for delivering machine learning solutions in the supply and demand space for verticals such as Retail, Consumer Packaged Goods, Life Sciences etc.

This includes problems in the space of forecasting, optimization, replenishment, recommendation, explainability, and more. The uniqueness of the team is that it performs at the intersection of technology and real business problems. You will contribute to the product that delights customers world-wide Kinaxis is seeking a talented and passionate Machine Learning Staff Developer to join our Machine Learning team. Your work will directly impact our enterprise-grade AI software platform and solutions, which are used by hundreds of customers worldwide to manage their supply chains.

*What you will do*
All aspects of the machine learning software development life cycle are familiar to you. You are passionate about shipping large-scale software systems in a fast-paced environment, but you can balance longer term issues such as maintainability, scalability and quality. You're fluent in Python object-oriented development and in the cloud. In addition to working with modern data storage, familiarity with Kubernetes, docker and have hands-on experience with big data technologies.

You have the ability and enthusiasm to learn new technologies whether they are infrastructure language or platform and easily adapt to change. You will define, drive, design, and build/ship end-to-end solutions that not only solve real customer problems but also create automated ML-based solutions to orchestrate our customers' supply chains, including

architectural design, relevant design documentation, test planning and execution.

You will contribute to the end-to-end AI/ML software development lifecycle, ensuring reproducible research and state-of-the-art results for our customers. You will drive architecture, design, and delivery of advanced ML systems in the Product R&D team. Oversee the work of junior developers and actively engage team members to develop their skills and build shared ownership across the code base. Proactively engages outside of team to unblock other team members while progressing their own technical assignments.

You are a team player, a quick starter and a problem solver, as well as comfortable talking requirements with product managers. You work well in a cross-functional team and can listen and contribute to discussions. Ideally provide readily available solutions while considering technical aspects, effort, and risk.

*What we are looking for*

• Advanced AI/ML Expertise: Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science or a related quantitative field with a deep specialization in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
• Lead and execute POCs: Generate hypotheses, design and execute experiments, evaluate outcomes to drive go/no-go decisions, and build successful POCs into production-ready software that have a large strategic impact.
• NLP & LLM Leadership: Strong, hands-on experience with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Large Language Models (LLMs), including fine-tuning, leading advanced model development, and comprehensive evaluation methodologies.
• Deep Learning Proficiency: Practical implementation and optimization expertise with various Deep Learning techniques and libraries (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow), covering network architectures, transformers, embeddings, regularization, optimization strategies, transfer learning, and knowledge distillation.
• Cutting-Edge AI Tools: In-depth familiarity and hands-on experience with the latest AI libraries, tools, and frameworks, such as Agentic AI, Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), prompt-engineering, and vector databases.
• End-to-End ML Software Development: Proven 8+ years of experience in designing, developing, debugging, testing, and optimizing complex machine learning solutions using Python, Pandas, Spark, etc. Strong software engineering skills.
• Cloud & Distributed Systems: Expertise in Linux, cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and distributed computing architectures.
• Scientific Leadership & Mentorship: Ability to provide technical guidance, set research goals, and effectively mentor and upskill junior team members across teams
• Technical Communication & Influence: Exceptional verbal and written communication skills, with a proven ability to effectively influence and advocate complex technical solutions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Nice To Have

• Manufacturing & Supply Chain Domain Knowledge: Experience in the manufacturing sector, particularly with supply chain knowledge.
• Advanced ML Fundamentals: Strong theoretical foundation and practical experience in advanced machine learning concepts, including statistical methods for ML, Bayesian methods, generative models, stochastic processes, and model explainability.
• Strong Theoretical Foundation: Solid mathematical background in linear algebra, probability and statistics, and optimization.
• Workflow Orchestration: Experience with workflow orchestration tools like Argo Workflows.
• Research & Publication Record: Publications at relevant venues such as ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, NeurIPS, ICLR, SIGIR, or KDD.

Work With Impact:
Our platform directly helps companies power the world's supply chains. We see the results of what we do out in the world every day—when we see store shelves stocked, when medications are available for our loved ones, and so much more.

Work with Fortune 500 Brands:
Companies across industries trust us to help them take control of their integrated business planning and digital supply chain. Some of our customers include Lockheed Martin, Yamaha, P&G, Honda, and more.

Social Responsibility at Kinaxis:
Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee weighs in on hiring practices, talent assessment training materials, and mandatory training on unconscious bias and inclusion fundamentals. Sustainability is key to what we do and we're committed to net-zero operations strategy for the long term. We are involved in our communities and support causes where we can make the most impact.

People matter at Kinaxis and these are some of the perks and benefits we created for our team:

• Flexible vacation and Kinaxis Days (company-wide day off on the last Friday of every month)
• Flexible work options
• Physical and mental well-being programs
• Regularly scheduled virtual fitness classes
• Mentorship programs and training and career development
• Recognition programs and referral rewards
• Hackathons

Kinaxis welcomes candidates to apply to our inclusive community. We provide accommodations upon request to ensure fairness and accessibility throughout our recruitment process for all candidates, including those with specific needs or disabilities. If you require an accommodation, please reach out to us at Please note that this contact information is strictly for accessibility requests and cannot be used to inquire about application statuses.

Kinaxis is committed to ensuring a fair and transparent recruitment process. We use artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the initial step of the recruitment process to compare submitted resumes against the job description, to identify candidates whose education, experience and skills most closely match the requirements of the role. After the initial screening, all subsequent decisions regarding your application, including final selection, are made by our human recruitment team. AI does not make any final hiring decisions.