Senior Director, ML/AI - Search and Recommendations

Expedia•San Jose, CA

1d•$296,000 - $517,000

About The Position

Expedia Group is hiring a Senior Director, ML/AI to lead its centralized Search and Recommendation science portfolio. The role shapes how travelers discover products across Vrbo, Hotels.com, and Expedia by leading the core ranking algorithms and retrieval systems that connect traveler intent with global travel supply. The organization is moving from siloed models toward Ranking Foundation Models that capture traveler preferences and apply that intelligence across verticals. The Senior Director defines and executes the scientific roadmap for search and recommendation, guiding the shift toward AI-native discovery. As a strategic partner to senior Product and Engineering leaders, the role influences product direction and marketplace architecture. It owns high-level technical decisions for ranking and recommendations, including the integration of technologies such as vector search, retrieval-augmented generation, and hybrid retrieval while balancing performance, latency, cost, and scalability. The role champions large-scale, multi-objective Ranking Foundation Models and the distillation of core ranking intelligence into efficient, vertical-specific models. It leads and mentors a large, multidisciplinary organization of Applied Scientists and ML leaders, fostering collaboration between research and product deployment. The position also ensures algorithms support long-term business value and a healthy supply-partner ecosystem.

Requirements

PhD or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
15+ years of experience in Data Science and Machine Learning.
8+ years of experience managing high-performing science teams and managing managers.
Deep expertise in search and ranking, including designing and deploying large-scale Ranking Foundation Models, representation learning, and retrieval systems such as Learning-to-Rank, Two-Tower architectures, and Multi-Task Learning.
Experience training large-scale teacher models and applying knowledge distillation to create efficient student models for high-throughput production ranking.
Experience making build-versus-buy decisions and designing ML systems for massive scale and real-time inference.
Strong business acumen and ability to influence executive stakeholders and explain complex architectural trade-offs to non-technical partners.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading ML/AI teams in a two-sided marketplace and balancing supply and demand dynamics.
Track record of migrating legacy search stacks to modern deep-learning or vector-based architectures.
Recognition as an industry leader, such as conference talks at RecSys, SIGIR, or KDD, patents, or open-source contributions.
Organizational leadership experience attracting top talent and designing effective structures for hybrid Research/Engineering teams.

Responsibilities

Define and execute the scientific roadmap for Expedia Group’s Search and Recommendation stack.
Drive the transition from classical ranking toward AI-native discovery experiences.
Partner with senior Product and Engineering leaders to shape roadmaps and use centralized ranking capabilities to unlock marketplace opportunities and streamline architecture.
Make high-level architectural decisions for search ranking and recommendations, integrating technologies such as vector search, RAG, and hybrid retrieval while balancing performance, latency, cost, and scalability.
Lead the strategy for Ranking Foundation Models, including training large-scale, multi-objective architectures and distilling ranking intelligence into efficient, vertical-specific models.
Manage and mentor a large, multidisciplinary organization of Applied Scientists and ML leaders.
Foster a culture connecting state-of-the-art research with high-velocity product deployment.
Ensure algorithms optimize long-term business value while maintaining a healthy ecosystem for supply partners.