Principal ML Scientist, Travel Search & Discovery

Expedia; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 242,000 - 339,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

Paid time off

Travel discounts

IATAN membership

Job summary

Expedia Group seeks a Principal Machine Learning Scientist to lead the development and optimization of search and recommendation AI models. You will architect hybrid, multi-modal retrieval frameworks integrating text, image, and structured data to drive relevant discovery across Expedia’s travel ecosystem.

The role focuses on deep learning, generative retrieval, and advanced ranking methods, while guiding a team of scientists and collaborating with product and engineering teams to deliver

Qualifications

• PhD, MS in Computer Science, ML, Statistics, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of related industry experience.
• Experience building production-grade search, recommendation or personalization systems.
• Strong understanding of intent understanding, retrieval, deep learning for recommendations, RL, and causal inference.
• Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks (TensorFlow, JAX, PyTorch).
• Experience with large-scale distributed systems and big data tech (Spark, Hadoop).
• Familiarity with A/B testing and experimentation methodologies.
• Ability to work with large-scale real-world data with bias, fairness, and privacy considerations.
• Excellent communication and mentoring skills.
• Passion for user-centric AI products and advancing state-of-the-art in search and recommendations.

Responsibilities

• Drive research, design and deployment of ML solutions for large-scale search and recommendation systems.
• Architect hybrid multi-modal retrieval frameworks combining text, image and structured data.
• Develop and optimize multi-stage ranking pipelines using deep learning and generative retrieval.
• Lead intent understanding using user queries and behavioral signals.
• Advance personalization using embeddings and context-aware algorithms.
• Pioneer sequential recommender systems accounting for evolving preferences and time.
• Design offline and online evaluation methods, including A/B testing and counterfactuals.
• Collaborate with engineering and product teams to translate business needs into ML solutions.
• Mentor and guide a team of scientists and engineers.

Skills

Python

TensorFlow

PyTorch

JAX

Distributed systems

Experimentation

Mentoring

Communication

Research leadership

Education

PhD or MS in CS/ML/Engineering

Tools

TensorFlow

PyTorch

JAX

Spark

Hadoop

Job description

Expedia Group seeks a Principal Machine Learning Scientist to lead the development and optimization of search and recommendation AI models. You will architect hybrid, multi-modal retrieval frameworks integrating text, image, and structured data to drive relevant discovery across Expedia’s travel ecosystem.

The role focuses on deep learning, generative retrieval, and advanced ranking methods, while guiding a team of scientists and collaborating with product and engineering teams to deliver