Lead Data Scientist (Dispatch)

Company Description

About Grab and Our Workplace

Grab is Southeast Asia's leading superapp. From getting your favourite meals delivered to helping you manage your finances and getting around town hassle-free, we've got your back with everything. In Grab, purpose gives us joy and habits build excellence, while harnessing the power of Technology and AI to deliver the mission of driving Southeast Asia forward by economically empowering everyone, with heart, hunger, honour, and humility.

Job Description

Get to Know the Team

Grab's Fulfillment Dispatch Data Science team tackles allocation and batching challenges to ensure passengers, driver-partners, consumers, and merchants experience reliable fulfillment Dispatch at Grab involves solving sequential decision-making problems through multi-stage optimization rather than static matching. This requires working on Reinforcement Learning (RL), Optimization, Simulation, and Graph Theory research and applications.

Get to Know the Role

As a Lead Data Scientist, you'll report into the Senior Data Science Manager and work onsite at Grab One North Singapore office. You'll build and deploy RL and optimization models that improve dispatch operations across our marketplace. You'll lead the lifecycle of our dispatch models—from understanding business needs and identifying areas for investigation, to translating them into technical problems and delivering solutions.

The Critical Tasks You Will Perform

• You'll analyse high-volume, high-velocity data to prototype reinforcement learning and optimization models, then engineer these into production-grade systems
• You'll design, develop, and deploy production-grade models that improve dispatch decisions and respond to changes in market conditions
• You'll build data pipelines and conduct experiments (A/B tests, randomised controlled trials) to measure the real-world impact of your models
• You'll communicate technical results and their business implications to product and business stakeholders, including explaining model behaviour in non-technical terms
• You'll keep current with reinforcement learning and operations research developments, share knowledge with your team and the data science community at Grab, and contribute to our technical competitive advantages

Qualifications

What Essential Skills You Will Need

To perform these tasks, you'll need:

• Advanced degree in a technical field – A PhD in Computer Science, Operations Research, Industrial & Systems Engineering, Mathematics, or related disciplines with at least 5 years of relevant experience. This equips you with the theoretical foundations needed to design complex optimization and learning algorithms.
• RL and optimization expertise – Experience developing production-grade RL and Operation Research (OR) systems, including feature extraction, data pipelines, and system maintenance. You need this to build models that make real-time dispatch decisions.
• Statistical and analytical skills – Knowledge of probability and statistics (hypothesis testing, modelling distributions, Bayesian statistics) and experience with large-scale data analytics using Spark or Kafka. You need this to design experiments and process the massive datasets generated by our marketplace.
• Programming proficiency – Fluency in Python for model development, and familiarity with cloud-based development environments (AWS or Azure) and test-driven development. You need Python to implement algorithms and cloud platforms to deploy models at scale.

Additional Information

Life at Grab

We care about your well-being at Grab, here are some of the global benefits we offer:

• We have your back with Term Life Insurance and comprehensive Medical Insurance.
• With GrabFlex, create a benefits package that suits your needs and aspirations.
• Celebrate moments that matter in life with loved ones through Parental and Birthday leave, and give back to your communities through Love-all-Serve-all (LASA) volunteering leave
• We have a confidential Grabber Assistance Programme to guide and uplift you and your loved ones through life's challenges.
• Balancing personal commitments and life's demands are made easier with our FlexWork arrangements such as differentiated hours

What We Stand For at Grab

We are committed to building an inclusive and equitable workplace that enables diverse Grabbers to grow and perform at their best. As an equal opportunity employer, we consider all candidates fairly and equally regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religion, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, family commitments, physical and mental impairments or disabilities, and other attributes that make them unique.