Machine Learning /AI - Mgr - G - II

Role Description

At Booking.com, data drives our decisions. Technology is at our core. And innovation is everywhere.

About the team

The Recommendations & Smart Positioning team powers the ordering of products and elements across various touchpoints on the Booking.com platform. The team manages billions of requests daily, each of which relies on cutting-edge Machine Learning (ML) solutions to support Booking.com customers. Within the team scope there are ML solutions for property and destination recommendations, Search Box optimization, Filters ranking and many other critical components within the Booking.com customer funnel.

As the Machine Learning Manager, you will manage a team of ML scientists working on different aspects of product recommendations at Booking.com.

You will lead and own all related technical aspects of the ML-based solution and collaborate with stakeholders across ML, Engineering and Product to provide the best outcome for customers.

As a technical manager, you should be passionate about technology, keep up to date with recent breakthroughs in the field, define and shape the team’s ML roadmap, and be willing to get hands-on with code when needed.

As the ML manager of the team, you are expected to be the focal point for all technical aspects, ensure your team members deliver on their tasks, and work together with other stakeholders to define and shape the roadmap of the products. You will work independently and will also be responsible for making technical decisions within your team.

When it comes to management, your expertise in handling people will help motivate and inspire them to reach outstanding success. You should have experience in developing people. You will mentor and coach your team while working closely with a Product Manager.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties:

• Build a strong team within your area by coaching and developing individual contributors.
• Prioritize work in collaboration with Product Managers, depending on business needs and keeping stakeholders aligned at all times.
• Translate machine learning vision and strategy into planning and execution, and ensure timely delivery of plans.
• Develop innovative ML models, algorithms and engineering approaches, or identify existing ones, with the potential to impact the business. Design and execute applied research plans to understand, apply, test, evolve and generalize these technologies into reusable frameworks.
• Translate business problems into viable, reliable and robust ML and AI solutions, accounting for constraints of the production environment.
• Monitor product health, performance and business impact and act accordingly when requirements are not met.
• Identify underlying issues and opportunities across domains and situations that are not obviously related through application of structured thinking and logic.
• Solve issues by applying methods and insights gained from a variety of disciplines, navigating a variety of environments.
• Make things happen by maintaining motivation and conveying a sense of urgency, focusing on outcomes and accomplishments while balancing long- and short-term goals through influencing techniques and decision-making skills.
• Drive, coach and mentor others through evidence and clear communication, explaining advanced technical concepts in simpler terms.
• Continuously evolve your craft. Keep up to date with industry and academic standard methodologies, periodically explore new technologies, introduce them to the machine learning community and promote their application in areas where they can generate impact.
• Actively contribute to Machine Learning at Booking.com through training, exploration of new technologies, interviewing, onboarding and mentoring colleagues.
• Push for improvements, scaling and extending machine learning tooling and infrastructure, collaborating with central teams.

Qualifications & Skills:

• Strong programming skills in languages such as Python and Java.
• Experience with cloud frameworks like AWS SageMaker and training models using TensorFlow or PyTorch.
• Experience with data at scale using MySQL, PySpark, Snowflake and similar frameworks.
• Deep understanding of machine learning algorithms, statistical models and data structures.
• Experience with experimental design, A/B testing and evaluation metrics for ML models.
• Experience of working on products that impact a large customer base is an advantage.
• Advanced knowledge and experience in recommendation systems, including engineering aspects of developing ML models at scale, is an advantage.
• Experience designing and executing end-to-end research and development plans and generating impact through large-scale machine learning model development, preferably evidenced by peer-reviewed publication, patents, open sourced code or similar.
• Relevant work or academic experience (MSc + 5 years of working experience, or PhD + 3 years of working experience) involving the application of Machine Learning to business problems.
• Experience across multiple machine learning facets: working with large data sets, model development, statistics, experimentation, data visualization, optimization and software development.
• Experience collaborating cross-functionally in the development of machine learning products, for example with Developers, UX specialists and Product Managers.
• Excellent English communication skills, both written and verbal.
• 3+ years leading an ML team of a minimum of 4 people in a fast-paced production environment.
• Successfully driving technical, business and people-related initiatives that improve productivity, performance and quality while communicating with stakeholders at all levels.
• Leading by example, gaining respect through actions rather than title, developing your team, motivating them to achieve their goals, providing timely feedback and managing key team performance indicators.

Benefits & Perks

Booking.com’s Total Rewards Philosophy is not only about compensation but also about benefits. We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, as well as unique-to-Booking.com benefits which include:

• 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 of up to 1400 per year for yourself, including automatic Genius Level 3 status and Booking.com wallet credit.