Machine Learning Manager - GenAI Applications

About Booking.com and the GenAI Applications Team

At Booking.com, data drives our decisions, technology is at our core, and innovation is everywhere. We believe in making it easier for everyone to experience the world. This role is within the GenAI Applications Team, part of the Data & AI Marketplace department, which is at the forefront of Generative AI, developing solutions for travel-related chatbots, text generation and summarization, Q&A systems, and free-text search.

The GenAI Applications team designs and delivers agentic, ML-powered solutions for impactful products like booking search, trip planning, and trip helpfulness, building AI-driven applications and conversational agents to enhance the customer experience.

Role Description

As a Machine Learning Manager - GenAI Applications, you will lead a team of Machine Learning Scientists and Engineers to build, design, develop, and evaluate machine learning solutions for scalable, customer-facing GenAI applications. Your focus will be on researching, training, fine-tuning, and rigorously evaluating models leveraging LLMs, recommendation systems, and agent-based architectures using state-of-the-art techniques. You will drive experimentation, define success metrics, and translate insights into impactful AI solutions for intelligent travel products.

As a technical manager, you are passionate about GenAI technology, staying updated with breakthroughs, defining the team's ML roadmap, and contributing with code when necessary. You will be the focal point for technical aspects, ensure team delivery, and collaborate with stakeholders to shape product roadmaps. You will work independently and be responsible for technical decisions within your team.

Your leadership expertise will motivate and inspire your team. You have experience developing people, mentoring, and coaching, while working closely with a Product Manager.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties

• Leadership in LLM Development: Build, guide, and mentor a team of ML scientists and engineers in the development, fine-tuning, and deployment of large language models (LLMs) tailored for the travel domain.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Work with product managers, data scientists, and analysts to translate business requirements into machine learning solutions. Define and communicate the technical vision and strategy for LLM initiatives, aligning with company goals.
• Team Cultivation: Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and excellence within the team, prioritizing work with Product Managers and keeping stakeholders aligned.
• ML Strategy & Execution: Translate machine learning vision into planning and execution, ensuring timely delivery.
• Innovative Development: Develop innovative ML models, algorithms, and engineering approaches, or identify existing ones, with potential business impact. Design and execute applied research plans to understand, apply, test, and generalize these technologies into reusable frameworks.
• Solution Delivery: Translate business problems into viable, reliable, and robust ML and AI solutions, accounting for production environment constraints.
• Performance Monitoring: Monitor product health, performance, and business impact, taking action when requirements are not met.
• Problem Solving: Identify underlying issues and opportunities across domains through structured thinking, applying insights from various disciplines.
• Drive & Influence: Maintain motivation, convey urgency, focus on outcomes, and balance long- and short-term goals through influencing and decision-making.
• Mentorship & Communication: Coach and mentor others through evidence and clear communication, explaining advanced technical concepts simply.
• Continuous Learning: Stay current with industry and academic best practices, explore new technologies, and promote their application within Booking.com.
• Community Contribution: Actively contribute to Machine Learning at Booking.com through training, interviewing, onboarding, and mentoring.
• Infrastructure Improvement: Push for improvements, scaling, and extending machine learning tooling and infrastructure, collaborating with central teams.

Qualifications & Skills

• Leadership Experience: At least 2 years of experience leading (or tech leading) ML teams in Natural Language Processing (NLP) or Generative AI (GenAI) domains, with a proven ability to guide teams to impactful results.
• GenAI Expertise: Advanced knowledge and experience managing teams developing GenAI applications, strong expertise in engineering aspects of Agentic designs for optimal performance and minimal latency.
• Academic and Applied Background: MSc with 6+ years or PhD with 4+ years of professional experience applying Machine Learning to solve business challenges. Master's, PhD, or equivalent in a quantitative field (e.g., Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Artificial Intelligence, Physics, etc.). Strong advantage for NLP-related thesis work.
• End-to-End R&D Proficiency: Demonstrated experience in designing and executing end-to-end research and development plans, from problem definition to model deployment and performance monitoring.
• Proven Impact: A track record of delivering measurable business value through the development and implementation of large-scale machine learning models.
• Broad ML Experience: Experience with multiple machine learning facets: large data sets, model development, statistics, experimentation, data visualization, optimization, software development.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Experience collaborating cross-functionally in the development of machine learning products (e.g., Developers, UX specialists, Product Managers).
• Technical Proficiency: Strong working knowledge of Python, Java, Kafka, Hadoop, SQL, and Spark or similar technologies. Experience with version control systems.
• Communication Skills: Excellent English communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Mentorship & Feedback: Leading by example, gaining respect through actions, developing your team, motivating them, providing timely feedback, and managing key team performance indicators.

Benefits & Perks - Global Impact, Personal Relevance

Booking.com's Total Rewards Philosophy offers a competitive compensation and benefits package, including:

• Annual paid time off and generous paid leave (parent, grandparent, bereavement, care leave).
• Hybrid working with flexible arrangements and up to 20 days per year working from abroad (home country).
• Industry-leading product discounts (up to 1400 per year), automatic Genius Level 3 status, and Booking.com wallet credit.

Diversity, Equity And Inclusion (DEI) At Booking.com

DEI is a core part of Booking.com's culture, with employees from over 140 nationalities. We ensure colleagues with disabilities receive necessary adjustments and tools for application, interviews, job functions, and employment benefits. As Chief People Officer Paulo Pisano states, "Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do."

Application Process

This role does not come with relocation assistance. Booking.com is an equal opportunity workplace and affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We strive to create an environment where everyone can thrive.

Pre-Employment Screening

Successful applicants may undergo a pre-employment screening check by a third party, which may include employment history, education, and other information to determine qualifications and suitability.

Key skills/competency

• Generative AI
• Large Language Models (LLMs)
• Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• Machine Learning Leadership
• Python Programming
• Data Science
• Agentic Design
• Model Deployment
• Experimentation
• Scalable AI Solutions