Expedia Group brands power global travel for everyone, everywhere. We design cutting-edge tech to make travel smoother and more memorable, and we create groundbreaking solutions for our partners. Our diverse, vibrant, and welcoming community is essential in driving our success.

Why Join Us?

To shape the future of travel, people must come first. Guided by our Values and Leadership Agreements, we foster an open culture where everyone belongs, differences are celebrated and know that when one of us wins, we all win.

We provide a full benefits package, including exciting travel perks, generous time-off, parental leave, a flexible work model (with some pretty cool offices), and career development resources, all to fuel our employees' passion for travel and ensure a rewarding career journey. We’re building a more open world. Join us.

Senior Machine Learning Scientist

Introduction to the Team:

Expedia Technology teams partner with our Product teams to create innovative products, services, and tools to deliver high-quality experiences for travelers, partners, and our employees. A singular technology platform powered by data and machine learning provides secure, differentiated, and personalized experiences that drive loyalty and traveler satisfaction.

The Traveler Engagement & Loyalty team at Expedia is at the forefront of innovation in AI-driven recommendation systems. We're dedicated to enhancing customer experiences, increasing engagement, and strengthening traveler relationships through cutting-edge machine learning solutions. Our work directly impacts millions of travelers worldwide, shaping their journey from dreaming to booking and beyond.

Join a newly formed Machine Learning Science team at Expedia Group focused on transforming Customer Relationship Management (CRM) through intelligent, personalized outbound communications. From crafting tailored travel recommendations to optimizing engagement strategies, your work will directly influence millions of travelers globally. This is a rare opportunity to build foundational systems in a high-impact domain, backed by Expedia’s AI-first vision.

In this role, you will:

• Build and optimize recommendation models for CRM use cases, including personalized email campaigns and retention strategies

• Apply deep learning and causal inference to sparse, noisy, and dynamic customer interaction data

• Design and analyze A/B experiments to validate model performance and drive product decisions

• Collaborate with ML Engineers to deploy models at scale, ensuring robustness and reliability in production environments

• Translate business objectives into measurable machine learning goals aligned with customer engagement outcomes

• Stay current with advancements in recommendation research, deep learning architectures, and personalization systems

• Mentor junior scientists and engineers, sharing best practices in ML modeling, experimentation, and deployment

Minimum Qualifications:

• PhD, MS, or BS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, Engineering, or a related field; or equivalent professional experience

• 8+ years of related industry experience

• Experience building production-grade recommendation or personalization systems

• Strong understanding of collaborative filtering, deep learning for recommendations, reinforcement learning, and causal inference

• Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks such as Tensor Flow or Py Torch

• Experience with distributed systems like Apache Spark

• Familiarity with A/B testing and experimentation methodologies

• Ability to work with large-scale, real-world data with attention to bias, fairness, and privacy

• Excellent communication skills for both technical and non-technical audiences

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in the travel or e-commerce industry

• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)

• Publications in top-tier ML conferences or journals

• Contributions to open-source ML projects

• Experience in personalization systems or CRM-focused ML applications

• Experience taking models from prototype to production in collaboration with Machine Learning Engineering teams

The total cash range for this position in San Jose is $187,000.00 to $261,500.00. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $299,000.00, which is the top of the range, based on ongoing, demonstrated, and sustained performance in the role.

Starting pay for this role will vary based on multiple factors, including location, available budget, and an individual’s knowledge, skills, and experience. Pay ranges may be modified in the future.

Expedia Group is proud to offer a wide range of benefits to support employees and their families, including medical/dental/vision, paid time off, and an Employee Assistance Program. To fuel each employee’s passion for travel, we offer a wellness & travel reimbursement, travel discounts, and an International Airlines Travel Agent (IATAN) membership. View our full list of benefits.

Accommodation requests

If you need assistance with any part of the application or recruiting process due to a disability, or other physical or mental health conditions, please reach out to our Recruiting Accommodations Team through the Accommodation Request.

We are proud to be named as a Best Place to Work on Glassdoor in 2024 and be recognized for award-winning culture by organizations like Forbes, TIME, Disability:IN, and others.

Expedia Group's family of brands includes: Brand Expedia®, Hotels.com®, Expedia® Partner Solutions, Vrbo®, trivago®, Orbitz®, Travelocity®, Hotwire®, Wotif®, ebookers®, Cheap Tickets®, Expedia Group™ Media Solutions, Expedia Local Expert®, Car Rentals.com™, and Expedia Cruises™. © 2024 Expedia, Inc. All rights reserved. Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners. CST: 2029030-50

Employment opportunities and job offers at Expedia Group will always come from Expedia Group’s Talent Acquisition and hiring teams. Never provide sensitive, personal information to someone unless you’re confident who the recipient is. Expedia Group does not extend job offers via email or any other messaging tools to individuals with whom we have not made prior contact. Our email domain is @expediagroup.com. The official website to find and apply for job openings at Expedia Group is careers.expediagroup.com/jobs.

Expedia is committed to creating an inclusive work environment with a diverse workforce. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. This employer participates in E-Verify. The employer will provide the Social Security Administration (SSA) and, if necessary, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with information from each new employee's I-9 to confirm work authorization.