Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Relevance and Personalization

Details

Airbnb was born in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe. Every day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way.

Role overview

The Relevance and Personalization team at Airbnb is responsible for search and recommendation across the entire Airbnb digital platform. The team builds end-to-end ranking algorithms and ecosystems for optimizing multiple business objectives, leveraging rich signals from structured and unstructured data (including sequential, image, and text data). The team collaborates across Airbnb to develop ranking solutions that support the marketplace for hosts and guests.

Responsibilities

• Work with large-scale structured and unstructured data to build and continuously improve machine learning models for product, business, and operational use cases.
• Develop, productionize, and operate ML models and pipelines at scale for both batch and real-time use cases.
• Work collaboratively with cross-functional partners including software engineers, product managers, operations, and data scientists to identify opportunities for business impact, refine and prioritize model requirements, drive engineering decisions, and quantify impact.
• Leverage third-party and in-house ML tools and infrastructure to develop reusable, high-performing ML systems that enable fast model development, low-latency serving, and model quality upkeep.
• Drive example projects such as feature platform development, model interpretability, hyperparameter optimization, and concept drift detection.

Requirements

• 9+ years of industry experience in applied machine learning; MS or PhD in a relevant field is expected.
• Strong programming skills (Scala / Python / Java / C++ or equivalent) and strong data engineering skills.
• Deep understanding of ML best practices (e.g., training/serving skew minimization, A/B testing, feature engineering, feature/model selection), algorithms (e.g., neural networks / deep learning, optimization), and domains (e.g., natural language processing, computer vision, personalization, search & recommendation, marketplace optimization, anomaly detection).
• Experience with three or more of the following technologies: TensorFlow, PyTorch, Kubernetes, Spark, Airflow (or equivalent), Kafka (or equivalent), data warehouses (e.g., Hive).
• Industry experience building end-to-end ML infrastructure and/or building and productionizing ML models.
• Exposure to architectural patterns for 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 & working arrangement

• 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.
• You must live in a U.S. state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity (some states are excluded).

Benefits / Compensation

• Base pay range: $212,000 — $265,000 USD.
• This role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits. The actual base pay is dependent upon factors such as training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs, and market demands.

Inclusion & accommodations

• Airbnb is committed to inclusion and encourages all qualified individuals to apply.
• If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation to submit an application, contact [email protected] with your full name, the role you’re applying for, and the accommodation required.