# David Harris

> Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Chewy

Location: Greater Boston, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/davidharris1

Innovative Staff Machine Learning Engineer with 6+ years of experience driving multi-million dollar business impact through advanced ML solutions. Expertise in:

* Developing revenue-generating recommendation systems ($50MM+ lift in incremental annual revenue)
* Optimizing e-commerce search algorithms and user experience
* Solving complex ML challenges (cold start, online optimization)
* Leading cross-functional projects and mentoring data science teams

Ph.D. in Population Biology, bringing unique statistical modeling insights to data-driven problem-solving. Adept at translating cutting-edge ML research into scalable, business-critical solutions.

## Work Experience
### Staff Machine Learning Engineer @ Chewy
Jan 2022 – Present
* Deployed price-based ranking strategy, generating $12MM annual incremental revenue
* Developed online optimization algorithm for maximizing session-level revenue
* Designed an exploration approach to solve cold start problem for new products
* Led search engine improvement projects (Elasticsearch/Opensearch), increasing site-wide conversion rate by 1%
* Mentored Data Scientists and ML Engineers, promoting best practices
* Collaborated cross-functionally to align ML initiatives with company goals

### Staff Data Scientist @ Chewy
Jan 2022 – Jan 2022
* Expanded the  recommendations model that I developed for Browse pages to cover Deals pages and Brands pages.
* Deployed an internal app for converting lists of product identifiers into browsable pages. The app won our team’s annual hackathon.

### Lead Data Scientist @ Chewy
Jan 2019 – Jan 2022
* Designed and implemented Chewy’s product recommendation algorithm for Browse pages using Pytorch (estimated impact: $50MM incremental revenue).
* Developed Chewy’s “Frequently Bought Together” model in R.
* Produced a widely-used internal tool for diversifying product recommendations with Python
* Developed an interactive tool allowing stakeholders to visualize prototype product recommendations without requiring a deployment (R/Shiny)
* Mentored other Data scientists.

### Senior Data Scientist @ Wayfair
Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | Greater Boston Area
• Developed Wayfair's next-generation product recommendation algorithm

### Fellow @ Insight Data Science
Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | Greater Boston Area
Designed a Bayesian model that predicted ALS symptom progression

### Postdoctoral Fellow @ University of Florida
Jan 2015 – Jan 2018


## Education
### Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Population Biology
University of California, Davis

### Bachelor's degree in Biology, General
Washington University in St. Louis

### Zoology/Animal Biology
Michigan State University


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/davidjayharris

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Source: https://flows.cv/davidharris1
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/davidharris1/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-31