Machine Learning Engineer Manager

KAYAK; Berlin (MD); Hybrid; USD 157,000 - 213,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Work from almost anywhere 20 days/year

Therapy sessions via SpringHealth

HeadSpace subscription

No meeting Fridays

Paid parental leave

Paid volunteer time

Development Dollars

Leadership development

Access to on‑demand e‑learnings

Travel discounts

Office in Friedrichshain

Job summary

KAYAK, part of Booking Holdings, is seeking a Machine Learning Engineering Manager to lead the Berlin-based ML Platform team. This senior, hands-on leader will own the platform's direction, roadmap, and delivery while staying engaged with architecture and core ML challenges.

You will build self-service capabilities for training, deployment, serving, and monitoring so teams can ship production ML safely and at scale. This role requires office presence in Berlin 3 days per week.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience with ML lifecycle systems.
• Hands-on production ML experience with platforms or infrastructure.
• People leadership including hiring and coaching.
• Strong ownership, judgment and systems thinking.

Responsibilities

• Own the strategy and roadmap for the shared ML Platform.
• Lead Berlin-based team of ML Platform Engineers.
• Drive platform architecture and ML lifecycle direction.
• Build and evolve training orchestration, model serving, feature management, and LLM workflows.
• Champion reliability with monitoring, incident response, and production readiness.
• Define ownership boundaries between platform and downstream teams.
• Collaborate with Data Science, Engineering, and Operations on complex initiatives.

Skills

ML platform leadership

People leadership

Systems design

Production ML

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Python

Kubernetes

GitHub Actions

Kafka

AWS

Airflow

Trino

Job description

KAYAK, part of Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG), is the world's leading travel search engine. With billions of queries across our platforms, we help people find their perfect flight, stay, rental car and vacation package. We're also transforming business travel with a new corporate travel solution, KAYAK for Business.

As an employee of KAYAK, you will be part of a travel company that operates a portfolio of global metasearch brands including momondo, Cheapflights and HotelsCombined, among others. From start-up to industry leader, innovation is at our core and every employee has an opportunity to make their mark. Our focus is on building the best travel search engine to make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

KAYAK is seeking a Machine Learning Engineering Manager to lead the development and evolution of its shared Machine Learning Platform. This is a senior, hands‑on technical leadership role.

You’ll lead a Berlin-based team which builds the shared infrastructure and developer workflows that take models from experimentation to reliable production. You’ll own its technical direction, roadmap, and delivery while staying hands‑on with architecture and the hardest engineering problems. In partnership with the team, you’ll build self‑service capabilities for training, deployment, serving, and monitoring so KAYAK teams can ship models safely and at scale.

If you’re excited to combine people leadership with building the systems that make machine learning work in production, we’d love to hear from you.

This role will be required to work from our Berlin office 3 days per week.

In this role, you will:

• Own the strategy and roadmap for KAYAK’s shared Machine Learning Platform, aligning technical investments with business needs and long‑term platform evolution.

• Lead, mentor, and grow a high‑performing Berlin‑based team of Machine Learning Platform Engineers, fostering technical excellence, autonomy, and operational accountability.

• Drive technical direction across platform architecture and the ML lifecycle, contributing hands‑on to high‑impact problems and simplifying legacy systems where it creates clear value.

• Build and evolve shared ML capabilities, including training orchestration, model serving, feature management, and LLM workflows, improving developer experience and enabling teams to deliver production‑ready ML solutions efficiently.

• Champion platform reliability and operational excellence, establishing robust monitoring, alerting, incident response, and production‑readiness standards.

• Define clear ownership boundaries so the platform team owns shared infrastructure and lifecycle tooling, while downstream teams own use‑case‑specific model and business logic.

• Collaborate with Data Science, Engineering, and Operations teams to plan and deliver complex, multi‑team initiatives, ensuring clear alignment on scope, dependencies, and timelines.

Please apply if you have:

• Strong technical foundations in software engineering, machine learning, and systems design, backed by significant hands‑on experience building and operating production ML systems, platforms, or infrastructure.

• At least 5 years of experience with ML lifecycle systems, including training orchestration, model serving, feature management, and monitoring, with a solid understanding of scalability, reliability, and operational trade‑offs.

• Meaningful people leadership experience, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and developing experienced technical talent, while maintaining a high technical bar and contributing hands‑on where it matters most.

• Strong ownership, judgment, and systems thinking, with the ability to balance platform evolution, developer experience, reliability, cost, and technical debt while influencing senior stakeholders.

• Ability to lead across organizational boundaries, aligning teams around shared infrastructure, navigating competing priorities, and driving platform adoption through collaboration rather than authority.

• 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 improvement and the ability to inspire the same in others.

Bonus qualifications

• Hands‑on experience with technologies relevant to KAYAK’s stack, such as Python, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, Kafka, AWS, Airflow, and Trino.

• Experience building LLM or agent workflows, including prompt or dataset‑processing pipelines

Benefits and Perks:

• Work from (almost) anywhere for up to 20 days per year

• Focus on mental health and well‑being:

  • Company‑paid therapy sessions through SpringHealth

  • Company‑paid subscription to HeadSpace

  • Company‑wide week off a year - the whole team fully recharges (and returns without a pile‑up of work!)

• No meeting Fridays

• Paid parental leave

• Paid volunteer time

• Focus on your career growth:

  • Development Dollars

  • Leadership development

  • Access to thousands of on‑demand e‑learnings

• Travel Discounts

• Employee Resource Groups

• 6 weeks paid vacation + a day off for your birthday

• Free lunch 2 days per week

• Pension plan contributions

• Public transportation subsidies

• Bike leasing program

• Monthly social events, Thursday happy hours, sports teams

• An awesome office in Friedrichshain, Berlin

Inclusion

At KAYAK, we want everyone to have the space to grow, share ideas and do great work. That’s why we’re focused on hiring the best talent from all walks of life and experiences, supporting them well and making sure no one feels like they have to fit a mold to belong here.

Need any adjustments for the interview, application or on the job? No problem - just give us a heads‑up. We’ve got you.

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