Senior Applied Scientist - Search Machine Learning

Wayfair • Mountain View, CA

4d

About The Position

About the Team: The Search Machine Learning (ML) team at Wayfair is at the forefront of designing and implementing algorithms that define our global search experience. Using cutting-edge machine learning approaches—including advanced NLP, semantic search, and multi-modal technologies—we aim to deliver fast, accurate, and personalized search results for over 22 million active customers. Our mission is to make the search experience intuitive and efficient, helping customers discover exactly what they need in a vast and diverse product catalog.

Requirements

• Expertise in search technologies, including retrieval, ranking systems, and query understanding.
• Strong proficiency in Python and/or Java for building and deploying ML-driven search systems.
• Deep understanding of NLP techniques, semantic search, and embedding-based retrieval.
• Proven ability to execute and deliver large-scale search-related ML projects, including roadmap development and implementation.
• Strong knowledge of statistical modeling, experimental design, hypothesis testing, or optimization.
• Experience with cloud-native technologies; familiarity with GCP and Vertex AI is a plus.
• Advanced problem-solving skills focused on tackling search-specific challenges like personalization, scalability, and accuracy.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with e-commerce search systems or similar large-scale applications.
• Experience in applying graph-based learning and multi-modal techniques to search.
• Practical expertise in designing scalable, reusable, and cloud-based search infrastructures.
• Contributions to internal forums or external ML and search-focused communities.

Responsibilities

• Enhance search relevance: Design and implement scalable ML models that improve the relevance, ranking, and personalization of search results across Wayfair's platforms.
• Optimize retrieval systems: Develop and fine-tune search retrieval techniques to improve performance and scalability in handling web-scale customer queries.
• Advance query understanding: Apply advanced NLP techniques to enhance query parsing, intent recognition, and semantic understanding for diverse user inputs.
• Innovate search experiences: Explore and implement graph-based learning, semantic embeddings, and multi-modal techniques to power next-generation search systems.
• Collaborate cross-functionally: Work closely with product managers, engineers, and data scientists to ensure alignment of search system improvements with business goals.
• Solve unique search challenges: Address search-specific issues such as cold-start problems, long-tail queries, and real-time search performance optimization.
• Contribute to the community: Share expertise through internal forums, author technical documentation, and represent Wayfair at leading ML conferences such as NeurIPS.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees