What is a Machine Learning Engineer at CHEP?

As a Machine Learning Engineer at CHEP, you are stepping into a pivotal role at the heart of the global supply chain. CHEP is a worldwide leader in pooling solutions, managing millions of pallets and containers that form the invisible backbone of global commerce. By joining this team, your work directly influences the efficiency, sustainability, and reliability of how goods move around the world.

In this role, you will tackle complex, large-scale logistical challenges using advanced predictive modeling and data science. Your impact extends from optimizing asset tracking and predicting demand surges to minimizing transportation miles and reducing carbon footprints. Because CHEP operates on a circular economy model, the machine learning solutions you build are fundamentally tied to reducing waste and improving operational efficiency for thousands of enterprise customers globally.

The problems you will solve here are highly strategic and technically demanding. You will navigate massive datasets generated by IoT sensors, global transit networks, and regional distribution centers. This role requires a unique blend of deep machine learning expertise, robust software engineering, and a strong product mindset to ensure that theoretical models translate into resilient, production-ready systems that drive tangible business value.

Common Interview Questions

The questions below reflect the patterns and themes frequently encountered by candidates interviewing for ML roles at CHEP. While you may not get these exact questions, practicing them will help you build the mental muscle needed for the actual interviews.

Machine Learning Theory & Modeling

This category tests your depth of knowledge regarding how algorithms work and when to apply them.

• Explain the difference between bagging and boosting, and provide an example of an algorithm for each.
• How do you handle multicollinearity in a dataset before training a linear regression model?
• Walk me through the mathematical intuition behind Gradient Descent.
• What techniques would you use to prevent a deep neural network from overfitting?
• How do you decide between using a simple heuristic versus a complex machine learning model for a business problem?

Coding & Data Manipulation

These questions evaluate your fluency in Python and SQL, focusing on data wrangling and algorithm implementation.

• Write a SQL query to find the rolling 7-day average of pallet deliveries per regional hub.
• Given a list of transit times, write a Python function to identify and remove statistical outliers.
• How would you optimize a pandas script that is currently running out of memory on a large dataset?
• Implement a basic version of K-Means clustering from scratch in Python.
• Write a function to merge two large datasets with mismatched timestamp frequencies.

Behavioral & Supply Chain Context

These questions assess how you work with others and how you approach domain-specific challenges.

• Tell me about a time your model performed well in testing but failed in production. How did you handle it?
• How would you explain a complex model's prediction to a warehouse manager who doesn't trust AI?
• Describe a situation where you had to push back on a stakeholder's unrealistic expectations for a data project.
• Why are you interested in applying machine learning to supply chain and logistics at CHEP?
• Tell me about a time you had to learn a new technology on the fly to complete a project.

Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Preparation is the key to navigating the CHEP interview process with confidence. Your interviewers are not just looking for someone who knows algorithms; they want to see how you apply those algorithms to messy, real-world supply chain problems.

To succeed, you should understand our core evaluation criteria:

Role-Related Knowledge – This measures your foundational understanding of machine learning theory, data structures, and software engineering. Your interviewers will evaluate your ability to select the right models for specific data types and your proficiency with tools like Python, SQL, and modern ML frameworks. You can demonstrate strength here by clearly explaining the trade-offs between different algorithmic approaches.

Problem-Solving Ability – At CHEP, we value structured thinking. This criterion assesses how you break down ambiguous, high-level business problems into actionable technical steps. You will be evaluated on your ability to handle missing data, design scalable architectures, and logically iterate on a solution when your first approach fails.

Engineering Best Practices – Because you will be deploying models into production, writing clean, maintainable code is critical. Interviewers will look at your coding style, your approach to version control, and your understanding of MLOps principles. Showing that you care about testing, documentation, and system reliability will set you apart.

Culture Fit and Values – CHEP thrives on collaboration, sustainability, and continuous improvement. We evaluate how well you communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and how you navigate feedback. Demonstrating a collaborative mindset and a genuine interest in supply chain sustainability is highly advantageous.

Interview Process Overview

The interview process for a Machine Learning Engineer at CHEP is thorough and highly professional, typically spanning four or more weeks. You will begin with an introductory screening with HR, which focuses on your background, career aspirations, and general alignment with the role. This is a conversational step designed to ensure mutual fit before diving into technical evaluations.

Following the initial screen, you will progress through up to three rounds of video interviews with technical leads and team members. These sessions progressively deepen in technical rigor, covering machine learning fundamentals, coding, and system design. You can expect a mix of theoretical questions and practical scenarios tied to logistics and data processing. The pace is deliberate, giving both you and the hiring team ample time to assess alignment.

The defining stage of the CHEP process is a final take-home assignment. Rather than relying solely on high-pressure live coding, this assignment allows you to showcase your problem-solving skills, coding standards, and business logic in a realistic environment. You will be evaluated not just on model accuracy, but on how well you structure your code, document your findings, and present your solution.

This visual timeline outlines your journey from the initial HR screen through the technical video rounds and the final assignment. Use this to pace your preparation, ensuring you review core ML concepts early on while saving your deepest coding and documentation focus for the project phase. Note that the exact number of video rounds may vary slightly depending on your location (e.g., Orlando vs. Atlanta) and the seniority of the role.

Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

Understanding exactly what your interviewers are looking for will help you focus your preparation. The technical and behavioral evaluations are broken down into several core areas.

Machine Learning Fundamentals & Applied Data Science

Your foundational knowledge of machine learning is critical. Interviewers want to know that you understand the math and mechanics behind the algorithms you use, rather than just treating them as black boxes. Strong performance in this area means you can clearly articulate why you would choose a random forest over a neural network for a specific tabular dataset, and how you would evaluate its success.

Be ready to go over:

• Supervised vs. Unsupervised Learning – Knowing when to apply classification, regression, or clustering techniques to supply chain data.
• Model Evaluation Metrics – Understanding Precision, Recall, F1-score, ROC-AUC, and RMSE, and knowing which metric aligns with specific business goals.
• Feature Engineering – Techniques for handling missing values, encoding categorical variables, and scaling numerical data in noisy environments.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Time-series forecasting (ARIMA, Prophet), spatial-temporal modeling, and predictive maintenance algorithms.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "How would you handle a dataset with highly imbalanced classes, such as predicting rare pallet damages?"
• "Explain the bias-variance tradeoff and how you would address overfitting in a tree-based model."
• "Walk me through how you would design a model to forecast container demand across different regional hubs."

Software Engineering & MLOps

A great model is useless if it cannot be deployed. CHEP expects Machine Learning Engineers to write production-grade code. You are evaluated on your fluency in Python, your understanding of data pipelines, and your familiarity with deployment environments. A strong candidate writes modular, readable code and understands how to monitor a model once it is live.

Be ready to go over:

• Python Proficiency – Writing clean, efficient scripts using pandas, NumPy, and scikit-learn.
• Data Manipulation – Using SQL to extract and transform large datasets from relational databases.
• Model Deployment – Concepts around containerization (Docker), REST APIs (Flask/FastAPI), and cloud platforms (AWS or Azure).
• Advanced concepts (less common) – CI/CD pipelines for machine learning, model drift detection, and automated retraining triggers.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Describe your process for taking a Jupyter Notebook prototype and turning it into a production-ready service."
• "Write a Python function to aggregate and clean a messy log file of daily transit times."
• "How do you monitor a deployed model to ensure its predictions haven't degraded over time?"

The Take-Home Assignment & Project Execution

The final assignment is a cornerstone of the CHEP interview process. It is designed to simulate the actual work you will do. You will be evaluated on the end-to-end execution of a data problem. Strong performance requires balancing model performance with code quality, comprehensive documentation (a stellar README), and clear business insights.

Be ready to go over:

• Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) – How you initially investigate the provided dataset to uncover trends and anomalies.
• Code Structure – Organizing your submission with clear directories, modular functions, and requirements files.
• Business Communication – Translating your model's outputs into actionable recommendations for operations teams.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Providing unit tests for your data processing functions within the assignment.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk us through the architectural decisions you made in your take-home assignment."
• "If you had two more weeks to work on this assignment, what features or improvements would you add?"
• "Why did you choose this specific evaluation metric for the assignment's business problem?"

Key Responsibilities

As a Machine Learning Engineer at CHEP, your day-to-day work bridges the gap between raw supply chain data and actionable operational intelligence. You will spend a significant portion of your time designing, training, and validating predictive models that address core business challenges, such as predicting asset loss, optimizing routing networks, and forecasting regional demand.

Collaboration is a massive part of this role. You will work closely with Data Engineers to ensure the data pipelines feeding your models are robust and reliable. You will also partner with Product Managers and business stakeholders to translate logistical bottlenecks into solvable machine learning problems. This means you must be as comfortable discussing business KPIs as you are debugging Python code.

Beyond model creation, you are responsible for the lifecycle of your solutions. This involves deploying models into production environments, setting up monitoring systems to track data drift, and continuously retraining models as global supply chain dynamics shift. You will actively contribute to the team's engineering culture by participating in code reviews, sharing best practices, and helping to elevate the overall MLOps maturity at CHEP.

Role Requirements & Qualifications

To be highly competitive for the Machine Learning Engineer position at CHEP, your profile should demonstrate a strong mix of theoretical knowledge and practical engineering experience.

• Technical skills – You must be highly proficient in Python and SQL. Experience with standard ML libraries (scikit-learn, XGBoost, pandas) is essential. Familiarity with deep learning frameworks (TensorFlow or PyTorch) and cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP) is highly valued.
• Experience level – For standard roles, 3+ years of experience in data science or machine learning engineering is typical. For Senior Machine Learning Engineer roles, expect a requirement of 5+ years, with a proven track record of owning models from ideation to production.
• Soft skills – Strong communication skills are non-negotiable. You must be able to explain complex technical decisions to non-technical supply chain leaders and collaborate effectively across global teams.
• Must-have skills – Python, SQL, foundational ML algorithms, code versioning (Git), and the ability to write production-ready code.
• Nice-to-have skills – Prior experience in logistics, supply chain, or manufacturing domains. Knowledge of operations research, linear programming, or advanced MLOps tools (MLflow, Kubeflow).

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How difficult is the interview process at CHEP? The difficulty is generally rated as average to moderately challenging. The technical video rounds are rigorous but fair, focusing on practical knowledge rather than obscure brainteasers. The most challenging aspect for many is the final assignment, which requires a significant time investment to do well.

Q: What is the most important part of the take-home assignment? While an accurate model is important, your interviewers care equally about your code quality, your exploratory data analysis, and your README. Treat the assignment as if you are submitting code to a production repository.

Q: How long does the entire interview process take? You should expect the process to take 4+ weeks from the initial HR screen to the final offer stage. The timeline allows sufficient time for scheduling the video rounds and gives you a fair window to complete the take-home assignment.

Q: What is the working culture like for the data team? The culture is highly professional, collaborative, and mission-driven. There is a strong emphasis on sustainability and circular economy principles. Teams value practical, scalable solutions over chasing the latest AI hype without a clear business use case.

Q: Do I need a background in supply chain to be hired? No, a background in supply chain is not strictly required, though it is a nice-to-have. What is required is a demonstrated willingness to learn the domain and understand the business context behind the data you are modeling.

Other General Tips

• Treat the assignment like a real project: Do not just submit a messy Jupyter Notebook. Modularize your code, include a requirements.txt, write clear docstrings, and provide a README that explains your methodology and business conclusions.
• Master the fundamentals: Do not get so caught up in advanced deep learning that you forget the basics. Be prepared to confidently discuss linear regression, logistic regression, decision trees, and standard evaluation metrics.
• Connect tech to business value: Always frame your technical answers in the context of business impact. At CHEP, saving a fraction of a cent on a pallet movement translates to massive global savings. Show that you understand this scale.
• Communicate your thought process: If you get stuck on a technical question, talk through your reasoning out loud. Interviewers value your problem-solving approach and your ability to pivot when given a hint, often more than getting the perfect answer immediately.

Summary & Next Steps

Interviewing for a Machine Learning Engineer position at CHEP is a unique opportunity to apply cutting-edge technology to the physical world of global logistics. The process is designed to be thorough and professional, ensuring that you have both the technical rigor and the business acumen to succeed in a complex, data-rich environment. By focusing your preparation on core ML fundamentals, clean software engineering practices, and structured problem-solving, you will position yourself as a standout candidate.

Remember that the take-home assignment is your best opportunity to shine. It is the perfect stage to demonstrate your meticulous coding standards and your ability to extract actionable insights from raw data. Approach every interview round with curiosity, a collaborative spirit, and a readiness to discuss how your models can drive real-world efficiency and sustainability.

This salary module provides baseline compensation insights for Senior Machine Learning Engineer roles, specifically referencing ranges in locations like Atlanta, GA. Use this data to understand the market rate for the position, keeping in mind that total compensation may also include bonuses, benefits, and variations based on your specific experience level and geographic location.

You have the skills and the drive to make a significant impact at CHEP. Continue to review your core concepts, practice communicating your technical decisions clearly, and explore additional interview insights and resources on Dataford to refine your strategy. Trust in your preparation, stay confident, and you will be well-equipped to ace your interviews.