Machine Learning Manager - PPC

Role Description

About Us: At Booking.com, data drives our decisions. Technology is at our core. And innovation is everywhere. Through our products, partners and people, we make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

About the team: The PPC team builds and optimizes large‑scale ML models for online bidding across all major search providers, owning one of the industry’s largest performance and auction strategies to keep Booking.com competitive. We run end‑to‑end research‑to‑production cycles—from POCs and modeling to large‑scale A/B testing—driving measurable impact by optimizing auction levers at scale.

Role Description: A leadership role in Booking.com Performance Marketing. You will lead a team of experienced Machine Learning Engineers and Scientists, accountable for maintaining the ML infrastructure and driving the next strategic directions for optimizing Booking.com online bidding strategy on search platforms, managing one of the largest performance marketing budgets in the industry, and ensuring Booking.com’s competitive edge in the complex dynamics of the bidding marketplace and online auction mechanisms. This role requires a unique combination of data and ML engineering expertise and experience in building production-ready machine learning models, together with extensive experience in driving solutions for real-world large-scale optimization problems and business products.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties

• Leadership in developing the next strategic solutions and driving business impact for bidding and optimization of Booking ads on top of the leading online travel agencies; lead, coach and mentor a team of machine learning scientists in a fast-paced environment of innovation and development of machine learning and optimization algorithms tailored to the performance marketing domain.
• Leadership in innovation management of the research cycle, involving POC, model development and large-scale A/B testing phases, for driving customer engagement while maximizing the efficiency of performance marketing spend.
• Continuously driving measurable business impact, fully utilizing the various optimization levers in the bidding and optimization space.
• Driving a culture of protagonism, ownership and craft excellence within the team and foster close collaborative relationships between the team and the larger organization.
• Continuously grow and develop the talent in the team and facilitate ways of working that foster the foundations on top of which the team can deliver business impact.
• Extensively work together with senior management to align on business objectives and financial goals.

Role Qualifications and Requirements

• Proven record in leading applicative research teams which own the development of innovative machine learning and optimization solutions for large-scale domains.
• Proficiency in large-scale optimization methodologies and auction mechanisms.
• Proven record of teams development and building and maintaining a culture of high-pace innovation.
• Proven Impact: A track record of delivering measurable business value through the development and implementation of large-scale machine learning models.
• Strong working knowledge of Python, SQL/BigQuery, Spark.
• Excellent communication skills.
• Master’s degree or PhD required (Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Artificial Intelligence, Physics).

Benefits & Perks - Global Impact, Personal Relevance:

• Annual paid time off and generous paid leave scheme including: parent, grandparent, bereavement, and care leave.
• Hybrid working including flexible working arrangements, and up to 20 days per year working from abroad (home country).
• Industry leading product discounts - up to 1400 per year - for yourself, including automatic Genius Level 3 status and Booking.com wallet credit.
• Contributing to a high scale, complex, world renowned product and seeing real-time impact of your work on millions of travelers worldwide.
• Working in a fast-paced and performance driven culture.
• Opportunity to utilize technical expertise, leadership capabilities and entrepreneurial spirit.
• Promote and drive impactful and innovative engineering solutions.
• Technical, behavioral and interpersonal competence advancement via on-the-job opportunities, experimental projects, hackathons, conferences and active community participation.
• Competitive compensation and benefits package and some great added perks of working in the home city of Booking.com.

If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.