Staff 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. The role focuses on developing end-to-end ranking algorithms and ecosystems for optimizing multiple critical business objectives.

The team builds AI technologies across the end-to-end search ranking product stack, including data pipelines, feature and model innovations, serving and experimentation efficiency, and signals from structured, sequential, image, and text data. The role involves collaboration with teams across Airbnb to develop ranking solutions that support a healthy marketplace for hosts and guests.

Responsibilities

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

Requirements

• 9+ years of industry experience in applied machine learning, including experience with an MS or PhD in a relevant field.
• Strong programming and data engineering skills using Scala, Python, Java, C++, or equivalent technologies.
• Deep understanding of machine learning best practices, including training/serving skew minimization, A/B testing, feature engineering, feature selection, and model selection.
• Knowledge of machine learning algorithms and domains such as neural networks, deep learning, optimization, natural language processing, computer vision, personalization, search and recommendation, marketplace optimization, and anomaly detection.
• Experience with at least three of the following technologies: TensorFlow, PyTorch, Kubernetes, Spark, Airflow or equivalent, Kafka or equivalent, and data warehouses such as Hive.
• Industry experience building end-to-end machine learning infrastructure and/or building and productionizing machine learning models.
• Exposure to architectural patterns for large-scale software applications, including well-designed APIs, high-volume data pipelines, efficient algorithms, and models.
• Experience with test-driven development and familiarity with 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 the manager. Employees must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. If the position is employed by another Airbnb entity, the recruiter will provide information about eligible states.

Benefits

The role may be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits. Airbnb is committed to an inclusive and accessible application and interview process and provides reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities.

Compensation

The base pay range is $212,000–$265,000 USD. Actual base pay depends on factors including training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs, and market demands. The pay range may change in the future.