OVERVIEW

Live the experience. From professional empowerment to continual learning opportunities. From ongoing investment in new and emerging technologies to a career of self-determination. At Ulta Beauty, our tech team is critical to our scalability—and is recognized that way. We’ve been defined as a “mature start-up.” A place where interdepartmental exposure, open doors, and genuine collaboration is ubiquitous. Where challenges come fast and furious, requiring agility, mental dexterity, and creativity. Where our passion for better solutions drives us and is core to who we are.

We’re engineering for the future of retail, and it’s no-holds-barred. But for those motivated by continual change and ambiguity, by superior leadership, by whip smart colleagues who will press you daily for your very best, you’ll find that virtually nothing’s impossible at Ulta Beauty.

NOTICE OF JOB OPPORTUNITY

COMPANY: Ulta, Inc.
LOCATION: 1000 Remington Blvd., Suite 120, Bolingbrook, IL 60440
TITLE: Lead Artificial Intelligence Engineer
HOURS: Monday to Friday, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm

DUTIES:

• Direct and oversee the full lifecycle execution of complex AI initiatives, bridging the gap between exploratory data science and production engineering, including formulation and statistical modeling to deployment and scaling.
• Contribute technical leadership to the development and optimization of advanced algorithms for recommendation and decision engines, utilizing techniques such as collaborative filtering, embeddings, clustering, reinforcement learning, and constrained optimization.
• Architect and deploy GenAI solutions: Design pipelines for Large Language Models (LLMs) including fine-tuning, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), and prompt engineering for enterprise retail use cases like analytics augmentation and decision support.
• Ensure "Enterprise Readiness": Take ownership of the non-functional requirements of AI systems, explicitly optimizing models for low-latency inference, high throughput, data privacy compliance, and cloud cost efficiency.
• Build production-grade pipelines: Transition code from experimental notebooks to modular, version-controlled software packages.
• Code Quality & Standards: Responsible for defining and enforcing engineering standards within the Enterprise AI team, including unit testing, documentation, peer code reviews, and reproducibility frameworks.
• Translate business needs into technical specs: Partner with business and IT product teams to refine vague use cases into concrete engineering requirements.
• Advise on emerging areas of technology and AI; evaluate and recommend AI technologies, frameworks, and tools to maintain cutting edge capabilities.
• Proactively look for opportunities to drive AI innovation, promote and advocate for those capabilities within Agile delivery framework.
• Project Estimation & Planning: Own detailed technical roadmaps, providing accurate time and effort estimates for the Engineering phases of projects.
• Engineering Standards: Promote adherence to statistical best practices and software engineering principles across the engineering team, fostering a culture of technical excellence.
• Communication: Present technical results and architectural decisions to senior stakeholders, effectively communicating the trade-offs between model complexity, performance, and cost.

REQUIREMENTS:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics or other quantitative field.
Seven (7) years in any occupation with experience working in data science, machine learning or AI.

SALARY:

$214,365 - $215,365 per year

APPLY:

https://careers.ulta.com/careers/544938

Ulta offers a standard benefits package. See a full list of benefits: https://careers.ulta.com/careers/about-us/benefits-and-career-development

ABOUT

At Ulta Beauty (NASDAQ: ULTA), the possibilities are beautiful. Ulta Beauty is the largest North American beauty retailer and the premier beauty destination for cosmetics, fragrance, skin care products, hair care products and salon services.