Principal Data Scientist

KAYAK, part of Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG), is the world’s leading travel search engine. With billions of queries across our platforms, we help people find their perfect flight, stay, rental car and vacation package. We’re also transforming business travel with a new corporate travel solution, KAYAK for Business.

As an employee of KAYAK, you will be part of a travel company that operates a portfolio of global metasearch brands including momondo, Cheapflights and HotelsCombined, among others. From start-up to industry leader, innovation is in our DNA and every employee has an opportunity to make their mark. Our focus is on building the best travel search engine to make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

KAYAK seeks a resourceful, agile data scientist with a strong curiosity about solving challenging machine learning problems across a range of domains and modalities, from recommender systems to reinforcement learning to vision to natural language processing. Good candidates will be well-versed in recent advances in machine learning and will be comfortable quickly testing and iterating on new ideas.

This position is focused on experimental projects and innovation across the business. Leveraging ML/AI, optimization, and our unique data assets, we strive for novel, impactful products and breakthrough improvements. We seek to distinguish our brand, to delight our users, and to help our customers experience the world with confidence and peace-of-mind.

Note: This is a hybrid work role for candidates who can join at least 3 days per week in-office. 

In this role, you will: 

• Design and implement your own solutions to modeling problems to improve user experience and enhance business outcomes.
• Conduct experiments and engage in rapid-prototyping of ideas, making creative use of the data and resources at your disposal.
• Implement designs in a stable, maintainable, and scalable production-ready form.
• Extract, process and leverage large data sets to drive successful projects.
• Engage in group problem-solving, and collaborative team efforts.
•  Communicate and share results in a clear and concise manner.
• Collaborate with strong researchers, product managers and engineers, and your work will have tangible impact

Please apply if you are/have:

• Deep expertise in math, statistics, systems design, and coding sufficient to lead and solve complex industrial machine learning and data science challenges. A PhD or equivalent in an aligned quantitative field (computer science, statistics, mathematics, operations research, engineering, etc.) is preferred and is a strong indicator of preparation, though not strictly required: what you can do (or rapidly learn to do) is more important.
• Proven experience applying core concepts and methods in machine/deep learning to real-world data science problems, with a strong track record of measuring and influencing impact at scale.
• Proficient with current Python machine learning development ecosystems: PyTorch or TensorFlow, pandas/polars, scikit-learn, git, etc.

Bonus Qualifications

•  Solid foundation in software engineering principles, with experience leading or mentoring in individual or team-based technical development.
•  Demonstrated success applying ML/AI in a business environment, including shaping high-level business problems into concrete modeling tasks.
• Hands-on experience with data engineering practices, including ETLs, relational databases, and large-scale data frameworks such as Trino
• Prior experience with ML engineering and/or MLOps, including deploying, maintaining, and monitoring machine learning models in production environments.

Do you want to be challenged and have an opportunity to shape our business? If you're interested in exploring new technologies at the intersection of AI, data engineering, computation, and product delivery at scale, then join us to help shape the future of travel!

Benefits and Perks

• Work from (almost) anywhere for up to 20 days per year
• Focus on mental health and well-being:
  • Company-paid therapy sessions through SpringHealth
  • Company-paid subscription to HeadSpace
  • Company-wide week off a year - the whole team fully recharges (and returns without a pile-up of work!)
  • No meeting Fridays
• Paid parental leave
• Generous paid vacation + time off for your birthday
• Paid volunteer time
• Focus on your career growth:
  • Development Dollars
  • Leadership development
  • Access to thousand of on-demand e-learnings
• Travel Discounts
• Employee Resource Groups
• 5 weeks paid vacation
• Social events & Thursday happy hours
• Free lunch 2 days per week
• Pension plan contributions
• Supplemental accident insurance
• Health insurance subsidy of 250 CHF per month
• Lunch Check Card of 180 CHF per month
• Profawo membership which is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the compatibility of family and work

Inclusion

At KAYAK, we want everyone to have the space to grow, share ideas and do great work. That’s why we’re focused on hiring the best talent from all walks of life and experiences, supporting them well and making sure no one feels like they have to fit a mold to belong here.
Need any adjustments for the interview, application or on the job? No problem - just give us a heads-up. We’ve got you.

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