Data Scientist - Travel Recommender & Production ML

Kayak; Zürich; On-site; CHF 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Work from (almost) anywhere for up to

Mental health focus

Company-paid therapy sessions

Vacation + birthday day off

Free lunch

Pension plan

Job summary

Kayak, a leading travel search engine, is seeking a mid-level Data Scientist to build recommendation systems that guide travelers toward flight, stay, and travel options. The role requires working from our Zurich office 3 days per week and collaborating with researchers, engineers, and product teams to improve user experience and business metrics.

You will translate questions into measurable modeling problems, develop and test data-driven solutions, and deploy production-ready models that impact

Qualifications

• Strong technical foundations in statistics, machine learning, and programming.
• Hands-on experience developing ML models in business or production environments, with the ability to clearly explain the problems addressed, your specific contributions, and the resulting impact.
• Ownership, sound judgment, and analytical thinking, with the ability to navigate technical trade-offs, work independently, and recognize when to seek guidance.
• Fluency with AI-assisted workflows, leveraging modern tools to improve productivity and quality while critically evaluating their outputs and limitations.
• Curiosity, humility, and a collaborative mindset, with a commitment to continuous learning, sharing knowledge, and improving together.

Responsibilities

• Translate product and business challenges into well-defined modeling problems, hypotheses, and measurable objectives.
• Ship production-ready, scalable Machine Learning solutions with real-world impact on user experience and key business metrics.
• Design and evaluate experiments, building rapid prototypes, assessing results rigorously, and iterating on promising ideas.
• Collaborate across Data Science, Product, and Engineering, communicating findings, recommendations, and trade-offs clearly and concisely to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Skills

Statistics

Machine Learning

Programming

Production ML

Tools

PyTorch

Polars

Docker

Airflow

Job description

Kayak, a leading travel search engine, is seeking a mid-level Data Scientist to build recommendation systems that guide travelers toward flight, stay, and travel options. The role requires working from our Zurich office 3 days per week and collaborating with researchers, engineers, and product teams to improve user experience and business metrics.

You will translate questions into measurable modeling problems, develop and test data-driven solutions, and deploy production-ready models that impact