Machine Learning Engineer II

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.

• Machine Learning Engineer II
• Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Engineering

About the team:

The AI Studio team is part of Booking.com’s AI Platform track. We:

• Build tooling to evaluate, maintain, and improve AI solutions.
• Develop Evaluation-as-a-Service and tools for creating LLM judges.
• Create AI-first workflows for evaluating traveller-facing, partner-facing, and internal AI solutions.
• Explore how evaluation can improve coding agents, skills, and other AI-powered software development tools.
• Build end-to-end systems across AI, backend services, and user interfaces.
• Work as a cross-functional team of ML, backend, frontend, and full-stack engineers.
• Use an agile, collaborative, and AI-first approach to help teams develop high-quality AI safely and effectively.

Role Description:

As a Machine Learning Engineer you are a driver of your field, who generates significant business impact directly and indirectly, and crafts the direction of product initiatives by being driven and having full ownership of your projects - from ideation to productizing, measuring and iterating on them - as well as coaching other Machine Learning Engineers, Scientists and Product Managers, etc to do the same.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties:

• Track developments in Agentic AI, evaluation, and AI-assisted software engineering.
• Work with product teams to shape AI evaluation strategies, including offline and online evaluation.
• Build AI-first tooling, including skills, tools, and agent profiles, and design and develop reliable backend services and APIs.
• Define technical direction through RFCs, designs, and architecture proposals.
• Collaborate with relevant ML teams across the company to improve, scale and extend AI tooling and infrastructure.
• Contribute to an AI-first engineering culture through code and architecture reviews.
• Drive a culture of quality for all ML practitioners
• Identify underlying issues and opportunities across the ML development cycle and introduce tools to be used within and outside the team for efficient development and testing.
• Continuously evolve your craft, keeping up to date with the latest technologies.

Qualifications and Skills:

• 3+ years of relevant work experience, involved with the application of Generative AI and Machine Learning Engineering to business problems in a commercial environment.
• Strong skills in coding and problem solving. Proficiency in at least one programming language; preferably Python and strong command of SQL is strictly required. Knowledge of Java is a plus.
• Demonstrable experience of multiple machine learning facets, such as working with large data sets, experimentation, scalability and optimization.
• Experience running Machine Learning systems in production is a must, with knowledge on how to generate predictions for ML frameworks with high throughput.
• Experience with data-driven product development: analytics, A/B testing, etc.
• Experience working in a cloud environment is a plus.
• Willingness to learn and understand complex and multidisciplinary business problems and concepts related to booking.com business operations especially in marketing and finance fields
• You have a ‘can do’ attitude and you act proactively and not reactively.
• BSc or higher in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, or related fields.
• Excellent English communication skills, both written and verbal.

Benefits & Perks - Global Impact, Personal Relevance:

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 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 - up to 1400 per year - for yourself, including automatic Genius Level 3 status and Booking.com wallet credit
• Living and working in Amsterdam, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe
• 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

• This role does not come with relocation assistance, therefore candidates must be currently based in the Netherlands in order to be considered.

Pre-Employment Screening

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.