Senior Manager, Machine Learning Science

Expedia, Inc.; City of Westminster; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Expedia Group in London is seeking a senior data science leader to manage a diverse team of ML scientists and engineers across locations. You will define goals, set priorities, and drive end-to-end ML solutions for content generation, moderation, and relevance.

As a technical leader, you will promote scalable, production-ready ML systems, collaborate with product and engineering, and mentor team members to grow their careers while delivering measurable business impact for travelers and partners.

Qualifications

• 4-5+ years of people leadership experience managing ML scientists/engineers.
• Master’s degree in computer science, machine learning, statistics, mathematics, or related field; or equivalent professional experience.
• Significant experience in machine learning science, including supervised/unsupervised learning, model evaluation, generalization, robustness, and experimentation.
• Experience delivering end-to-end ML solutions from problem definition to production integration.
• Experience managing and developing data scientists or ML engineers, including recruiting and coaching.
• Experience with Python, Scala, Java, or another major ML language, plus SQL.
• Demonstrated stakeholder management, prioritization, delivery optimization, communication, influencing, and problem-solving skills.
• An engineering mindset with knowledge of software design principles, modular code, maintainability, and scalability.
• Familiarity with large language models and willingness to learn across content areas and modalities.
• Experience translating business objectives into practical, iterative, and cost-aware technical approaches.

Responsibilities

• Manage, coach, and develop a high-performing, inclusive team of data scientists and machine learning engineers across locations.
• Set team goals, OKRs, technical priorities, and operating rhythms aligned with organizational strategy.
• Lead delivery across the Content AI charter, spanning content generation, content moderation and quality, and content relevance.
• Guide development and adoption of end-to-end machine learning solutions across textual, video, and image content, with potential expansion into speech.
• Develop accurate, relevant, grounded and non-hallucinating content AI capabilities that helps shape traveller and partner value across Expedia Group.
• Apply effective stakeholder management across Product, Engineering, senior leadership, and cross-functional partners.
• Optimize delivery through iterative execution, clear decision-making, effective processes, and a focus on measurable outcomes.
• Bring an engineering mindset to machine learning work by promoting maintainable, modular, scalable, and production-aware solutions.
• Communicate technical concepts, progress, insights, and recommendations clearly to varied audiences.
• Build team practices that support feedback, knowledge sharing, professional development, recruiting, performance management, and career growth.

Skills

People leadership

Machine learning

Python/Scala/Java

SQL

Stakeholder management

Communication

Engineering mindset

Multimodal ML

Education

Master's degree in CS/ML/related field

PhD (preferred)

Tools

Python

Scala/Java

SQL

LLMs / NLP tooling

Job description

At Expedia Group, we help travelers explore the world, one journey at a time. As a global travel company powered by passionate people, trusted partnerships, and leading technology, we connect travelers, partners, and advertisers through our consumer brands, B2B network, and travel advertising business.

Here, you'll do meaningful work that helps millions of people discover, book, and experience travel with more ease, confidence, and joy. Our five Behaviors-Traveler First, Think Big, Operate with Excellence, Ownership Mindset, and Succeed Together-help foster a supportive environment where people can grow their careers and have the flexibility, benefits, and support to do their best work. Join us and build for travelers everywhere.

Expedia Technology teams’ partner with our Product teams to create innovative products, services, and tools that deliver high-quality experiences for travellers, partners, and employees. A singular technology platform powered by data and machine learning provides secure, differentiated, and personalized experiences that build loyalty and traveller satisfaction.

In this role, you will:

• Manage, coach, and develop a high-performing, inclusive team of data scientists and machine learning engineers across locations.

• Set team goals, OKRs, technical priorities, and operating rhythms aligned with organizational strategy.

• Lead delivery across the Content AI charter, spanning content generation, content moderation and quality, and content relevance.

• Guide development and adoption of end-to-end machine learning solutions across textual, video, and image content, with potential expansion into speech.

• Develop accurate, relevant, grounded and non-hallucinating content AI capabilities that helps shape traveller and partner value across Expedia Group.

• Apply effective stakeholder management across Product, Engineering, senior leadership, and cross-functional partners.

• Optimize delivery through iterative execution, clear decision-making, effective processes, and a focus on measurable outcomes.

• Bring an engineering mindset to machine learning work by promoting maintainable, modular, scalable, and production-aware solutions.

• Communicate technical concepts, progress, insights, and recommendations clearly to varied audiences.

• Build team practices that support feedback, knowledge sharing, professional development, recruiting, performance management, and career growth.

Experience and Qualifications:

Required

• 4-5+ years of people leadership experience managing Machine Learning Scientists, Applied Scientists, Data Scientists, or multidisciplinary AI/ML teams.

• Master’s degree in computer science, machine learning, statistics, mathematics, or a related technical field; or equivalent related professional experience.

• Significant experience in machine learning science, including supervised and unsupervised learning, model evaluation, generalization, robustness, and experimentation.

• Experience delivering end-to-end machine learning solutions, from problem definition and data preparation through feature engineering, modelling, evaluation, and production integration.

• Experience managing and developing data scientists or machine learning engineers, including recruiting, coaching, performance management, and career development.

• Experience with Python, Scala, Java, or another major machine learning language, plus SQL.

• Demonstrated stakeholder management, prioritization, delivery optimization, communication, influencing, and problem-solving skills.

• An engineering mindset, including knowledge of software design principles, modular code, maintainability, and scalability.

• Familiarity with large language models and willingness to learn across content areas and modalities.

• Experience translating business objectives into practical, iterative, and cost-aware technical approaches.

Preferred

• PhD in a relevant technical field.

• Familiarity with LLMOps model inference, and machine learning platform capabilities.

• Experience with GenAI, LLM fine-tuning, golden dataset construction, evaluation metric definition, multimodal retrieval, embeddings, quantization, or LLM decoder architecture optimization.

• Experience with recommender systems or reinforcement learning.

Accommodation requests

Expedia Group is committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruiting experience. If you need an accommodation or adjustment due to a disability during the application or recruiting process, please submit a request at https://expedia.service-now.com/askeg?id=job_accommodation.

About Expedia Group

Expedia Group includes three flagship consumer brands - Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo - along with a leading B2B travel business and travel advertising offerings. Across our brands and business, we help travelers explore the world with confidence and ease.

Important notice

Employment opportunities and job offers at Expedia Group will always come from Expedia Group's Talent Acquisition and hiring teams. Never share sensitive personal information unless you are confident of the recipient. Expedia Group does not extend job offers via email or messaging tools to individuals with whom we have not made prior contact. Our email domain is @expediagroup.com. The official place to find and apply for roles is https://careers.expediagroup.com/jobs/.

Equal Opportunity

Expedia is committed to creating an inclusive work environment with a diverse workforce. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, disability or age.