Principal Machine Learning Scientist

About the company: The company 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 the company, Inc. (Nasdaq: TRIP), include a portfolio of travel brands and businesses, including the company, 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 and booking conversion. 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 capable of processing billions of travel data points 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 SOTA Retrieval & Ranking, Sequential & Temporal Modeling, and Advanced Representation Learning.
• Technical Stack: Mastery of Python and deep learning frameworks alongside hands-on experience with distributed computing and cloud infrastructure.
• Desired: Strong experience applying Graph Neural Networks, familiarity with Agentic AI frameworks, and experience working in E-commerce, Travel Tech, or Two-Sided Marketplaces.

What We Offer:

• Competitive compensation packages, including base salary and annual bonuses.
• Flexible schedule and remote-friendly approach to collaboration.
• Work-life balance ingrained in our culture.
• Donation matching for qualifying charitable donations.
• Tuition assistance for qualified programs.
• Lifestyle benefit for personal spending.
• Travel perks and discounts.
• Employee assistance program for life's challenges.
• Health benefits with great coverage and competitive premiums.
• Generous referral scheme for successful candidate referrals.

Our Cultural Pillars:

• Traveler first: We exist to create value for our customer, the traveler.
• Execution is our edge: We act fast, experiment, learn from failure, iterate, and improve.
• We succeed together: The best outcomes are driven by diverse subject matter experts working toward shared goals.

We strive to create an accessible and inclusive experience for all candidates. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application or recruiting process, please reach out to your individual recruiter or our team.