AI Optimization Engineer

About Us: Datacor is the leading provider of software solutions, including ERP, CRM, Asset Tracking, Simulation and Formulation, to the process manufacturing space. We are on a mission to better equip the industry with software solutions and move it forward by building thoughtful, intuitive products that solve our customers’ most difficult problems. We are passionate about serving our customers and helping them use data as a competitive advantage. Our customers make products that extend and sustain lives by sanitizing, fertilizing, beautifying, cleaning, and recycling the world we live in. We at Datacor help our customers make those products you use every day more safely, cost effectively and more efficiently through our technology platforms and applications. The Role: At our core, we empower top talent with the autonomy to craft innovative solutions that make a real difference helping our users become better, faster, smarter, and more efficient. We are looking for an AI Optimization Engineer to lead and define our optimization capabilities across our product suite. Your mission: reinvent how some of the country's leading process manufacturers and distributors manage their end-to-end operations from inbound ingredient arrivals through production sequencing to outbound fleet and delivery optimization. This is a greenfield role with real depth and full ownership you will set the technical direction, establish the algorithmic foundation, and drive delivery from design through production deployment. You will shape how Datacor approaches optimization across many customers, each operating under their own unique set of business constraints and operational realities. Critically, this role spans multiple Datacor products and cross-functional teams giving you rare visibility and influence across the full business, not just a single product or vertical. You'll lead and collaborate directly with product managers, engineers, and domain experts in a fast-moving team that values your judgment and expertise driving initiatives from problem framing through MVP and into production, seeing your work run in the real world, on the screens of operators making high-stakes decisions every day. If you are energized by hard combinatorial problems, want to build and own a solver capability from the ground up, and care about delivering things that create real impact this is the role for you. Responsibilities: · Define and lead the technical strategy for optimization use cases across Datacor's product portfolio. · Translate complex, real-world operational constraints into rigorous mathematical models. · Design, implement, and benchmark optimization algorithms including exact methods, metaheuristics (simulated annealing, tabu search, genetic algorithms), and commercial solvers (OR-Tools, Gurobi, CPLEX, or equivalent). · Make principled tradeoffs between solution quality, computational cost, and real-time responsiveness. · Collaborate closely with product, engineering, and design teams to ensure the solver doesn't just work algorithmically it becomes a solution that real users can understand, trust, and act on every day. · Drive end-to-end delivery of optimization solutions from prototype to production working across cross-functional teams. · Integrate optimization engines into production software via APIs and enterprise data pipelines. · Serve as the internal authority on optimization methods communicating algorithm design, performance, and tradeoffs clearly to both technical and business audiences. · Stay ahead of advances in OR, combinatorial optimization, and applied AI and bring new ideas and thinking that push our capabilities forward. Qualifications Required: · Master's degree in Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, or a related quantitative field with 3+ years of hands-on industry experience, or a PhD in a related field. · Proven track record of taking optimization solutions from problem definition to p