URBN Senior Data Scientist

URBN is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to develop AI-powered visual experiences, with a primary focus on image and video generation. This individual will lead algorithm development and Image/Video Generative AI initiatives, leveraging generative AI models, multimodal data sources, and modern creative AI workflows to drive innovation across our digital ecosystem. The role involves close collaboration with leadership, Product Management, Creative, and Engineering teams.

As Senior Data Scientist, you will play a pivotal role in building and orchestrating image and video generation pipelines that power AI-first innovations at URBN, from product imagery and creative content to virtual try-on and beyond. You will drive the development, implementation, and validation of generative visual AI solutions across a range of applications to support our product lifecycle.

This role blends deep technical fluency in generative models with a strong visual sensibility. The ideal candidate combines a solid machine learning foundation with hands-on experience in the rapidly evolving image and video generation landscape, including diffusion models, multimodal architectures, and GenAI workflow orchestration tools. You should be able to evaluate generated outputs not just quantitatively, but with a critical creative eye.

If you are passionate about the intersection of generative AI and visual storytelling, and you stay current with the fast-moving landscape of image and video models, we invite you to help shape the future of intelligent, AI-native creative experiences at URBN.

• Design, implement, and optimize image and video generation pipelines using state-of-the-art  models to produce high-quality visual content at scale.
• Build and maintain multi-model generative workflows using orchestration tools that chain together generation, inpainting, upscaling, style transfer, and conditioning steps into production-ready pipelines.
• Fine-tune and adapt image generation models using techniques such as LoRA, DreamBooth, ControlNet, IP-Adapter, and textual inversion to achieve brand-consistent, style-controlled outputs.
• Leverage multimodal and vision-language models for image understanding, visual analysis, automated tagging, and quality evaluation within generative workflows.
• Evaluate, prototype, and integrate emerging video generation models into creative and product workflows.
• Develop agentic AI pipelines that orchestrate multi-step visual content creation, from prompt generation and image synthesis to post-processing and delivery.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including Creative, Product Management, and Engineering to translate brand and business needs into scalable generative AI solutions.
• Lead the technical evaluation of new generative AI models, tools, and vendors as the landscape evolves, influencing decisions for URBN's visual AI technology stack.
• Guide data curation and preparation strategies for fine-tuning, including dataset construction, annotation workflows, and synthetic data generation.
• Analyze and benchmark model outputs for quality, consistency, and brand alignment, designing robust validation and feedback loops that combine quantitative metrics with qualitative human assessment.
• Partner with engineers to translate research prototypes into production-grade services and APIs, with attention to cost optimization and throughput at scale.

Must-Have

• 5+ years of industry experience in data science, machine learning, or AI engineering, with a strong foundation in ML fundamentals.
• 1+ year of hands-on experience working with image generation models in a professional or serious applied context, not casual experimentation.
• Strong proficiency in Python, with practical experience using ML frameworks such as PyTorch and Hugging Face multimodal models.
• Hands-on experience with image model fine-tuning and conditioning techniques
• Working knowledge of GenAI workflow orchestration tools for building multi-step generation pipelines.
• Experience with multimodal and vision-language models for image understanding, captioning, or visual analysis.
• Experience with cloud-based AI infrastructure for training, fine-tuning, and serving generative models.
• Proven ability to evaluate and rapidly adopt new generative AI models and tools as the field evolves.
• Strong visual sensibility, with an eye for image quality, composition, and brand consistency in generated outputs.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to bridge technical and creative teams.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in a quantitative field such as Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering, or Mathematics, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice-to-Have

• Experience with video generation models and understanding of the evolving video GenAI landscape.
• Hands-on experience with creative design tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Firefly, or Figma, especially AI-augmented creative features like generative fill and inpainting.
• Experience building agentic AI workflows to orchestrate multi-model pipelines.
• Familiarity with fashion, retail, or e-commerce applications of generative AI, such as virtual try-on, AI product photography, or on-model image generation.
• Background in computer vision fundamentals like segmentation, detection, and embeddings that complement generative work.
• Experience with prompt engineering at scale, developing systematic prompt libraries or structured prompting strategies for consistent visual output.

#LI-EM2

URBN offers comprehensive Perks & Benefits to employees. Availability and eligibility to specific benefits may be subject to your location and employment status. Benefits include medical, dental, vision, PTO, generous employee discounts, retirement savings and much more! For additional information visit www.urbn.com/work-with-us/benefits

URBN celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We are proud to provide equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, sex (including gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression), religion, creed, age, physical or mental disability, national origin or ancestry, ethnicity, citizenship, service in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic as established by law. We believe strongly in fostering a safe, fair and respectful work environment. To ensure compliance with our non-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, we offer anti-harassment training to managers and employees.