Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Relevance and Personalization

Details

The Relevance and Personalization team at Airbnb is responsible for search and recommendation across the entire Airbnb digital platform. You will lead and work on critical, impactful projects focused on developing end-to-end ranking algorithms and ecosystems for optimizing multiple business objectives. The team builds cutting-edge AI technologies across the end-to-end search ranking product stack, including data pipelines, feature and model innovations, serving and experimentation efficiency, and leverages rich signals from various types of data (structured, sequential, image, text).

Responsibilities

• Work with large-scale structured and unstructured data and build and continuously improve cutting-edge machine learning models for product, business and operational use cases.
• Collaborate with cross-functional partners (software engineers, product managers, operations, data scientists) to identify opportunities for business impact, refine and prioritize model requirements, drive engineering decisions, and quantify impact.
• Hands-on develop, productionize, and operate ML models and pipelines at scale for both batch and real-time use cases.
• Leverage third-party and in-house ML tools & infrastructure to develop reusable, high-performing ML systems that enable fast model development, low-latency serving, and ease of model quality upkeep.
• Projects may include: feature platform, model interpretability, hyperparameter optimization, concept drift detection, and experimentation infrastructure.

Requirements

• 5+ years of industry experience in applied machine learning; MS or PhD in a relevant field is preferred.
• Strong programming skills (examples listed: Scala / Python / Java / C++ or equivalent) and data engineering skills.
• Deep understanding of ML best practices (training/serving skew minimization, A/B testing, feature engineering, feature/model selection), algorithms (neural networks / deep learning, optimization), and domains (NLP, computer vision, personalization, search and recommendation, marketplace optimization, anomaly detection).
• Experience with 3 or more of these technologies: TensorFlow, PyTorch, Kubernetes, Spark, Airflow (or equivalent), Kafka (or equivalent), data warehouse (e.g., Hive).
• Industry experience building end-to-end ML infrastructure and/or productionizing ML models.
• Exposure to architectural patterns of large, high-scale software applications (well-designed APIs, high-volume data pipelines, efficient algorithms/models).
• Experience with test-driven development, A/B testing, incremental delivery and deployment.

Location

• This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed with your manager. Candidates must live in a U.S. state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity (some states excluded; check Airbnb careers for details).

Our Commitment to Inclusion & Belonging

• Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible and to a disability-inclusive application and interview process. Candidates who require reasonable accommodation can contact [email protected] with their full name, the role, and the accommodation needed.

How We'll Take Care of You / Compensation

• Base pay range: $191,000—$225,000 USD. The actual base pay depends on factors such as training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands. The role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.

Additional Details / Resources

• Some past publications from the team: https://sites.google.com/view/airbnb-relevance-publications/home