At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead machine learning strategy to enhance travel discovery for millions of users.
- Company: Join Tripadvisor, a global leader in travel experiences and technology.
- Benefits: Enjoy competitive pay, flexible work options, and generous perks like tuition assistance.
- Other info: Collaborative culture focused on innovation and personal growth.
- Why this job: Make a real impact on travel tech while mentoring a talented team.
- Qualifications: Ph.D. or Master’s in a quantitative field with 8+ years of ML experience.
The predicted salary is between 80000 - 100000 € per year.
About Tripadvisor
The Tripadvisor Group connects people to experiences worth sharing, and aims to be the world’s most trusted source for travel and experiences. We leverage our brands, technology, and capabilities to connect our global audience with partners through rich content, travel guidance, and two-sided marketplaces for experiences, accommodations, restaurants, and other travel categories. The subsidiaries of Tripadvisor, Inc. (Nasdaq: TRIP), include a portfolio of travel brands and businesses, including Tripadvisor, Viator, and TheFork.
About the role:
As a Principal Machine Learning Scientist, you will be the technical anchor for our core discovery engine. You will lead the machine learning strategy and execution that powers how millions of users search for, discover, and organize their complex travel itineraries. This is a high-impact role bridging the gap between cutting-edge AI research and production-grade engineering, directly influencing multi-objective business outcomes like user engagement, booking conversion, etc. You will tackle complex, ambiguous problems at the intersection of deep multi-task ranking, sequential user modeling, and graph-based travel recommendations. If you are passionate about building state-of-the-art AI systems and mentoring a high-performing team of scientists, this role is for you.
What You'll Do
- Technical Leadership & Execution: Drive the technical roadmap for Search, Retrieval, Ranking, and Recommendation systems within the Trips vertical. Translate high-level business goals into concrete ML architectures and scalable production systems.
- Advanced Algorithm Innovation: Design, prototype, and scale next-generation recommendation and ranking models. Solve complex, non-linear travel journeys by utilizing sequential recommenders, representation learning, and deep multi-objective frameworks.
- System Architecture & Scalability: Oversee the deployment of low-latency, high-throughput retrieval and ranking pipelines (e.g., multi-stage retrieval, vector search) capable of processing billions of travel data points (reviews, photos, bookings, user intent) in real-time.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with Product Managers, Engineering Leads, and Data Science peers to optimize multi-task business objectives simultaneously. Act as the primary technical authority for ML initiatives within the Trips vertical.
- Talent Multiplier: Mentor and coach senior and mid-level ML scientists. Foster a culture of technical excellence, driving best practices for MLOps, rigorous A/B testing, data privacy, and code quality.
Skills & Experience:
- Education: Ph.D. or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a highly quantitative field.
- Experience: 8+ years of industry experience developing and deploying large-scale ML models in a production environment, with a proven track record of shipping systems at the scale of millions of active users.
- Core Technical Expertise: Deep theoretical and practical knowledge in the following areas:
- SOTA Retrieval & Ranking: Practical experience with Multi-Task Learning (MTL), Multi-gate Mixture-of-Experts (MMoE), or similar architectures optimized for multi-objective optimization.
- Sequential & Temporal Modeling: Hands-on experience building sequential recommendation systems that capture real-time user session dynamics and long-term historical preferences.
- Advanced Representation Learning: Deep understanding of embedding generation, deep semantic retrieval, and multi-modal representation learning.
- Technical Stack: Mastery of Python and deep learning frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch) alongside hands-on experience with distributed computing (Spark, Ray) and cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP).
Desired:
- Graph Neural Networks (GNNs): Strong experience applying GNNs, knowledge graphs, or graph embeddings to map complex relations between travel entities (e.g., users, destinations, itineraries, points of interest).
- Agentic AI & Generative AI: Familiarity with Agentic AI frameworks, LLM-driven reasoning, or autonomous planning agents to enhance conversational search and automated itinerary generation.
- Experience working in E-commerce, Travel Tech, or Two-Sided Marketplaces, specifically handling non-linear user journeys and highly constrained inventory (e.g., hotel availability, tour timings).
- A strong track record of academic or industry contributions, including publications in top-tier AI/IR conferences (e.g., SIGIR, KDD, RecSys, NeurIPS) or open-source ML contributions.
What We Offer
- Competitive compensation packages (routinely benchmarked against the latest industry data), including base salary and annual bonuses.
- “Work your way” with flexibility to suit your lifestyle. Tripadvisor Group takes a remote-friendly approach to collaboration across a worldwide team, with the option to join on-site as often as you’d like or as required by your team.
- Flexible schedule. Work-life balance is ingrained in our culture by design. Trust and accountability make it work.
- Donation matching. Give back? Give more! We match qualifying charitable donations annually.
- Tuition assistance. Want to level up your career? We love to hear it! Receive annual support for qualified programs.
- Lifestyle benefit. An annual benefit to spend on yourself. Use it on travel, wellness, or whatever suits you.
- Travel perks. We believe that travel is employee development, so we provide discounts and more.
- Employee assistance program. We’re here for you with resources and programs to help you through life’s challenges.
- Health benefits. We offer great coverage and competitive premiums.
- Generous referral scheme. Help us grow and be rewarded with generous awards for referring successful candidates.
Our Cultural Pillars:
- Traveler first: We exist to create value for our customer, the traveler. We enable our suppliers and partners to unlock this value. Their collective behaviors and insights are what drives us.
- Execution is our edge: We act fast, experiment, learn from failure, iterate, and improve the solutions of tomorrow across every aspect of our business. Our execution is agile, data-driven, prioritised, and built to scale. We assume no problem is someone else’s problem and finish what can be done today, knowing tomorrow will bring fresh challenges.
- We succeed together: The best outcomes are driven by empathic, humble, and diverse subject matter experts working toward shared goals. We collaborate relentlessly, challenge assumptions, give actionable feedback, and set each other up for success through empowered teams with a clear charter. We transparently take ownership of our growth, individually and as a team. We celebrate the quality of our effort, our learnings, and our collective achievements.
We strive to create an accessible and inclusive experience for all candidates. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please make sure to reach out to your individual recruiter or our team at AccessibleRecruiting@tripadvisor.com. If you have any additional questions about careers at Tripadvisor you can email us at recruitment@tripadvisor.com. We have all the answers!
Principal Machine Learning Scientist in London employer: Tripadvisor
Tripadvisor is an exceptional employer that fosters a culture of innovation and collaboration, making it an ideal place for a Principal Machine Learning Scientist to thrive. With a remote-friendly approach, flexible schedules, and a strong emphasis on work-life balance, employees are empowered to excel in their roles while enjoying generous benefits such as tuition assistance and travel perks. The company prioritises employee growth and development, ensuring that team members have the resources and support needed to advance their careers in a dynamic and inclusive environment.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Principal Machine Learning Scientist in London
✨Tip Number 1
Network like a pro! Reach out to folks in the industry, especially those at Tripadvisor. A friendly chat can open doors that a CV just can't.
✨Tip Number 2
Show off your skills! Prepare a portfolio or a project that highlights your machine learning expertise. Bring it up during interviews to demonstrate your hands-on experience.
✨Tip Number 3
Practice makes perfect! Get ready for technical interviews by solving problems on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank. The more you practice, the more confident you'll feel.
✨Tip Number 4
Apply through our website! It’s the best way to ensure your application gets seen. Plus, we love seeing candidates who are genuinely interested in joining our team.
We think you need these skills to ace Principal Machine Learning Scientist in London
Some tips for your application 🫡
Tailor Your CV:Make sure your CV is tailored to the Principal Machine Learning Scientist role. Highlight your experience with ML models, especially those that relate to retrieval and ranking systems. We want to see how your skills align with our needs!
Craft a Compelling Cover Letter:Your cover letter is your chance to shine! Use it to explain why you're passionate about AI and how you can contribute to our mission at Tripadvisor. Be sure to mention any relevant projects or experiences that showcase your expertise.
Showcase Your Technical Skills:Don’t hold back on showcasing your technical skills in Python, TensorFlow, or PyTorch. We love seeing practical examples of your work, so include links to any projects or publications that demonstrate your capabilities in machine learning.
Apply Through Our Website:We encourage you to apply through our website for the best chance of getting noticed. It’s the easiest way for us to keep track of your application and ensure it reaches the right people. Plus, we love seeing candidates who take the initiative!
How to prepare for a job interview at Tripadvisor
✨Know Your Stuff
Make sure you brush up on the latest trends in machine learning, especially around retrieval and ranking systems. Be ready to discuss your experience with multi-task learning and how you've applied it in real-world scenarios.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Prepare to talk about specific projects where you've designed and deployed ML models. Highlight any challenges you faced and how you overcame them, particularly in high-throughput environments. This will demonstrate your problem-solving skills and technical expertise.
✨Collaborate Like a Pro
Since this role involves cross-functional collaboration, think of examples where you've worked closely with product managers or engineering teams. Be ready to discuss how you’ve optimised business objectives through teamwork and communication.
✨Mentorship Matters
As a Principal Machine Learning Scientist, you'll be expected to mentor others. Share your experiences in coaching or leading teams, and how you've fostered a culture of excellence in your previous roles. This shows you're not just a tech whiz but also a great leader.
