Retail Technology Careers: Data Science, AR, and More

Having computer science, data science, or other technical skills on your resume can make you competitive in a variety of industries, but which should you choose? Finding a career that fits your needs and interests is important for remaining engaged and fulfilled after graduation. This short post will talk about some of the various retail technology careers and topics that I’ve found are up and coming.

These are sectors that are continuing to grow, so jobs are certainly going to be available over the next decade for these topics. Let’s consider some of the interesting stuff that’s going on out there in the retail industry.

Cutting Edge of Retail Technology

Some of the leading retail technology trends are point-of-sale, augmented reality, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. When it comes to selling things like the latest fashion, these technologies might sound like overkill, but they provide a significant competitive advantage to some of the largest businesses and franchises out there like Amazon, Macy’s, Sephora, and more.

First I’ll briefly go over what each technology is and then what skills you’ll probably need in order to get into these types of careers that build and maintain these systems.

Point of Sale

Whenever you buy a sandwich at Curl Market through Grubhub, you’re using a point of sale system. Most of the time when people talk about POS (when they aren’t using it as a rude expression), they’re talking about cash registers. Grubhub, however, is a virtual POS system that can help manage transactions.

One of the biggest problems that we have at Curl Market is that Grubhub’s POS system is great for taking your money, but horrible for supply management. There is very little integration between Grubhub and our supply count, meaning that Grubhub’s order menu doesn’t always understand that we are out of a certain product. You’ll often wind up getting substitute items when you order something that we don’t have.

To resolve this, our employees have to manually turn off certain items on the menu so that you don’t see them. In an ideal world, Grubhub’s system would be able to identify what product we have perfectly. This might utilize solutions such as automated item counts, and special storage solutions that better enable a computer to count items. This is a bit overkill for a business like Dining Services, but extremely competitive in a retail situation like Target or Walmart.

Augmented Reality

You’re probably familiar with AR already if you’ve ever played Pokemon Go. It uses your device’s camera to view the world, and then places virtual objects in that space for you to see and interact with. A very large number of people have access to AR-compatible devices, so this has huge potential in almost every industry.

In retail technology, AR can be used for things like virtual fitting rooms. Sephora lets you try on products this way with your selfie camera. It’s very similar to how Snapchat applies filters to your face, but in Sephora’s case it’s for marketing and shopping purposes.

Portable AR technology is improving rapidly. One of the best devices on the market right now is the iPhone 12 Pro with its advanced LiDAR sensor. Personally, I think that the holy grail of this technology would be something mounted on your face. It’s irritating to take out your phone and wave it around a store and drains your battery. Perhaps you could be one of the frontrunners for developing comfortable, affordable AR glasses? 

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

This is the less obvious of the four technologies I mentioned, but one that has boundless potential. If you are interested in data science, I’m sure this has no doubt crossed your mind. Machine learning and artificial intelligence drive technologies like AR, but they also are essential for businesses to compete in areas like demand forecasting, supply chain management, personalization, and more.

The basic principle is that machines can perform tasks more efficiently than we can. However, they need a human to feed them quality training data in order for them to succeed. For example, finding defects on a product line is a common task that you’ll find AI systems doing in manufacturing.

In retail, data can be used to predict changes in demand from customers very quickly. This can give businesses enough time to reallocate their resources and order more product to meet that demand so that there aren’t any shortages. This is extremely helpful in times of crisis like the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when panic buying resulted in shortages of toilet paper and other goods.

The Skills You Need

Although a good knowledge of how the retail industry works is essential to all of these new technologies, the core of all of them involves highly technical knowledge in programming and data science.

Point of Sale: Network Management and Security

Point of Sale technologies in the retail industry aren’t just about exchange of money and supply management. Some other things that you should be good at are network management and network security. Some corporations have very complicated Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to aid their stores. Amazon has gone as far as removing cashiers from some stores entirely, relying on complicated arrays of cameras and IoT devices to track which products customers are buying.

If any part of the system is hacked or otherwise compromised, it can be serious. Identity theft is only one of the many problems that can arise from this, so having network security on your resume can make you a very competitive applicant.

Augmented Reality: Programming Languages

Computer science majors, this one is for you. Augmented reality shares a lot in common with video game design. C# is one of the most popular programming languages in use for both. 3D modeling and animation tools like Blender and Maya are useful skills as well since the goal of AR is to display virtual objects in the real world on a screen. In the retail industry, this will likely include things like clothes, furniture, and more.

AI and ML: Data Science

Those who are good at working with data, data processing, mathematics, and statistical analysis might be interested in artificial intelligence and machine learning applications in the retail industry. If you like numbers and aren’t afraid to experiment with data, building algorithms that can perform tasks like demand forecasting for retail businesses may be right up your alley.

Majors at Ohio State

Now that you know the types of skills that you need to get into up and coming technologies in retail, what are some programs here at Ohio State that could help expand your skills?

Ohio State’s Data Analytics major program offers a variety of different specializations. Their business analytics specialization I believe lends itself well to tasks like demand forecasting in the retail industry. The Computer Science Engineering department also has several programs that can help prepare one for careers in areas like augmented reality. The CSE department can also help prepare you for managing POS systems with its focuses in network security and management.

I hope that this was helpful for you in finding out what careers you might be interested in with respect to the retail industry and what programs Ohio State offers that can prepare you for those careers. If there are any careers you’d like me to look into to make suggestions about in another article, please let me know in the comments!