Senior Manager, Machine Learning Science - Bundled Products Recommendations

Traveltechessentialist; Washington; Hybrid; USD 173,000 - 243,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Travel perks

Generous time-off

Flexible work model

Career development resources

Job summary

Expedia Group is seeking a Senior Manager, Machine Learning Science to lead the Bundled products ranking, recommendations, and intent modeling for Brand Expedia across Flights, Cars, Packages, and Activities. You will work with product and engineering teams to surface relevant offerings and optimize traveler experiences.

You will mentor ML scientists, define end-to-end ML roadmaps, and ensure scalable, production-grade solutions that drive business outcomes and strong collaboration across

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree or Equivalent Level; Technical Degree Preferred.
• 8+ years of relevant professional experience and 3+ years of people management experience.
• Strong expertise in modern machine learning methods in ranking and recommendation with solid programming skills and collaboration with engineering teams on system, API, and data design.
• Substantial experience leading end-to-end machine learning initiatives, including problem definition, data preparation, feature engineering, model development, offline evaluation, experimentation, and integration into production systems.
• Proven experience managing or technically leading machine learning scientists or applied researchers, with ownership spanning multiple services, products, or problem spaces.

Responsibilities

• Enable a team to develop industry-leading ranking & recommendation models for the travel industry to enable travelers to have memorable travel experiences.
• Lead and grow a team of machine learning scientists to deliver production-grade ML solutions that solve complex business problems and improve traveler and partner experiences across multiple product domains.
• Define and drive the end-to-end machine learning roadmap for your area, from problem formulation and data strategy through model design, evaluation, and productionization in close partnership with engineering and product.
• Set and enforce best practices for experimental design, A/B testing, and causal inference to ensure ML-driven decisions are statistically robust, interpretable, and aligned to business and customer outcomes.
• Partner with data engineering and software engineering teams to ensure ML models are scalable, resilient, observable, and well-integrated into services, APIs, and data pipelines in production.
• Mentor, coach, and develop ML scientists through technical guidance, peer review, and career development, fostering a culture of scientific rigor, continuous learning, and high impact delivery.
• Apply familiarity with AI-driven systems, tools, or workflows and AI/ML concepts to real world products, safely integrating and operating AI/ML-enabled solutions that improve outcomes across multiple lines of business.

Skills

Ranking & Recommendation ML

Team Leadership

Data Design & API

Experimentation & A/B Testing

Collaboration with Eng

Education

Bachelor’s Degree or Equivalent Level

Tools

GenAI

ML Toolchain

Job description

Expedia Group brands power global travel for everyone, everywhere. We design cutting-edge tech to make travel smoother and more memorable, and we create groundbreaking solutions for our partners. Our diverse, vibrant, and welcoming community is essential in driving our success.

Why Join Us?

To shape the future of travel, people must come first. Guided by our Values and Leadership Agreements, we foster an open culture where everyone belongs, differences are celebrated and know that when one of us wins, we all win.

We provide a full benefits package, including exciting travel perks, generous time-off, parental leave, a flexible work model (with some pretty cool offices), and career development resources, all to fuel our employees' passion for travel and ensure a rewarding career journey. We’re building a more open world. Join us.

Introduction to the team

The Whole Trip AI team at Expedia Group enables unforgettable travel experiences. The team’s responsibilities cover search ranking & recommendations for Brand Expedia across core lines of business including Flights, Cars, Packages, and Activities. Additionally, we’re responsible for optimizing our interactions with travelers across this domain, including cache optimization, pricing forecasting, and next-best action modeling. Our approaches include both traditional ML as well as GenAI-based solutions. We work closely with other teams in the Data & AI organization to continually improve our tools, processes, and platforms for building and deploying industry leading AI solutions.

As a Senior Manager, Machine Learning Science you and your team will own our Bundled products ranking, recommendations, and intent modeling. You will work closely with stakeholders in Cars, Activities, Attach & Packages to help travelers book multi-item trips with Expedia by surfacing relevant offerings in the right places in the experience. Your team owns multiple high traffic, live models and with significant scope for further growth. You will work with a dynamic group of product managers, engineers, and scientists to achieve Expedia’s business goals.

In this role, you will:

• Enable a team to develop industry-leading ranking & recommendation models for the travel industry to enable travelers to have memorable travel experiences
• Lead and grow a team of machine learning scientists to deliver production-grade ML solutions that solve complex business problems and improve traveler and partner experiences across multiple product domains
• Define and drive the end-to-end machine learning roadmap for your area, from problem formulation and data strategy through model design, evaluation, and productionization in close partnership with engineering and product
• Set and enforce best practices for experimental design, A/B testing, and causal inference to ensure ML-driven decisions are statistically robust, interpretable, and aligned to business and customer outcomes
• Partner with data engineering and software engineering teams to ensure ML models are scalable, resilient, observable, and well-integrated into services, APIs, and data pipelines in production
• Mentor, coach, and develop ML scientists through technical guidance, peer review, and career development, fostering a culture of scientific rigor, continuous learning, and high impact delivery
• Apply familiarity with AI-driven systems, tools, or workflows and AI/ML concepts to real world products, safely integrating and operating AI/ML-enabled solutions that improve outcomes across multiple lines of business

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree or Equivalent Level; Technical Degree Preferred
• 8+ years of relevant professional experience and 3+ years of people management experience
• Strong expertise in modern machine learning methods in ranking and recommendation with solid programming skills and collaboration experience with engineering teams on system, API, and data design
• Substantial professional experience leading end-to-end machine learning initiatives, including problem definition, data preparation, feature engineering, model development, offline evaluation, experimentation, and integration into production systems
• Proven experience managing or technically leading machine learning scientists or applied researchers, with ownership spanning multiple services, products, or problem spaces

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with natural language search and refinement of recommendations using natural language
• Experience with multi-modal recommendations across images, structured metadata, and unstructured text
• Demonstrated track record delivering large-scale machine learning solutions in high-traffic, data-rich environments, including setting technical direction and architecture for multi-service or multi-domain ML systems
• Experience designing and operationalizing experimentation platforms, advanced measurement frameworks, or causal inference methodologies to drive data-informed decision making at scale
• Leadership experience in raising the technical bar for ML teams through publication-quality analyses, reusable modeling frameworks, rigorous data and model quality practices, and effective documentation
• Proven ability to advance a team’s capabilities with emerging AI/ML techniques and tooling, including GenAI & agentic techniques, to unlock new product experiences and operational efficiencies

The total cash range for this position in Seattle is $173,000.00 to $242,500.00. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $277,000.00, which is the top of the range, based on ongoing, demonstrated, and sustained performance in the role.

Starting pay for this role will vary based on multiple factors, including location, available budget, and an individual’s knowledge, skills, and experience. Pay ranges may be modified in the future.

Benefits

• We provide a full benefits package, including exciting travel perks, generous time-off, parental leave, a flexible work model (with some pretty cool offices), and career development resources, all to fuel our employees' passion for travel and ensure a rewarding career journey.
• Expedia Group is proud to offer a wide range of benefits to support employees and their families, including medical/dental/vision, paid time off, and an Employee Assistance Program.
• To fuel each employee’s passion for travel, we offer a wellness & travel reimbursement, travel discounts, and an International Airlines Travel Agent (IATAN) membership.

View our full list of benefits.

Accommodation requests

If you need assistance with any part of the application or recruiting process due to a disability, or other physical or mental health conditions, please reach out to our Recruiting Accommodations Team through the Accommodation Request.

We are proud to be named as a Best Place to Work on Glassdoor in 2024 and be recognized for award-winning culture by organizations like Forbes, TIME, Disability:IN, and others.

Expedia Group’s family of brands includes: Brand Expedia®, Hotels.com®, Expedia® Partner Solutions, Vrbo®, trivago®, Orbitz®, Travelocity®, Hotwire®, Wotif®, ebookers®, CheapTickets®, Expedia Group™ Media Solutions, Expedia Local Expert®, CarRentals.com™, and Expedia Cruises™. © 2024 Expedia, Inc. All rights reserved. Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners. CST: 2029030-50

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, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. This employer participates in E-Verify. The employer will provide the Social Security Administration (SSA) and, if necessary, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with information from each new employee's I-9 to confirm work authorization.