Principal ML Scientist — Personalization & Search

Expedia, Inc.; San Jose (CA); Presencial; USD 242.000 - 339.000; Jornada completa

Ventajas ofrecidas por este puesto de trabajo

Medical, dental & vision coverage

Paid time off

Wellness & travel reimbursement

Travel discounts

IATAN membership

Descripción de la vacante

Expedia Group is seeking a Principal Applied Scientist to lead research and deployment of AI models for search, personalization, and recommendations. You will architect multi-modal retrieval, optimize ranking pipelines, and drive experimentation using large-scale data sets in a production environment.

You will mentor a team of scientists, collaborate with engineering and product partners, and shape AI solutions aligned with Expedia Group’s AI-first vision.

Formación

• PhD, or MS, in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, Engineering, or a related field; or equivalent professional experience
• 10+ years of related industry experience
• Experience building production-grade search, recommendation or personalization systems
• Strong understanding of intent understanding techniques, retrieval methods, deep learning for recommendations, reinforcement learning, and causal inference
• Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks such as TensorFlow, JAX, or PyTorch
• Experience with large-scale distributed systems and big data technologies (e.g., Spark, Hadoop)
• Familiarity with A/B testing and experimentation methodologies
• Ability to work with large-scale, real-world data with attention to bias, fairness, and privacy
• Excellent communication skills for both technical and non-technical audiences
• Demonstrated ability to mentor and technically lead research or engineering teams
• A passion for building user-centric AI products and a keen curiosity about advancing the state-of-the-art in search and recommendations

Responsabilidades

• Drive the research, design, and deployment of advanced machine learning solutions for large-scale search and recommendation systems
• Architect hybrid multi-modal retrieval frameworks, combining text, image, and structured data to power relevant and diverse content discovery
• Develop and optimize multi-stage ranking pipelines, leveraging deep learning, generative retrieval, and other advanced algorithms to maximize relevance and engagement
• Lead efforts on intent understanding, utilizing user queries, behavioral signals, and context for superior search and recommendation accuracy
• Advance personalization strategies using embeddings, user-item modeling, and context-aware algorithms to tailor content to individual users
• Pioneer cutting-edge sequential recommender systems that account for evolving user preferences, session context, and temporal dynamics
• Design robust offline and online evaluation methodologies, including A/B testing, counterfactual estimation, and metric development
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional engineering and product teams to translate business needs into machine learning problems and production-ready solutions
• Mentor and guide a team of scientists, driving best-in-class research and deployment practices

Conocimientos

Deep learning

Search and recommendations

Python

Distributed systems

A/B testing

Fairness and privacy

Communication

Mentorship

Educación

PhD or MS in CS/ML/Engineering or related field

Herramientas

TensorFlow

JAX

PyTorch

Spark

Hadoop

Descripción del empleo

Expedia Group is seeking a Principal Applied Scientist to lead research and deployment of AI models for search, personalization, and recommendations. You will architect multi-modal retrieval, optimize ranking pipelines, and drive experimentation using large-scale data sets in a production environment.

You will mentor a team of scientists, collaborate with engineering and product partners, and shape AI solutions aligned with Expedia Group’s AI-first vision.