Machine Learning Engineer I

About Us:

At Booking.com, data drives our decisions. Technology is at our core. And innovation is everywhere. But our company is more than datasets, lines of code or A/B tests. We’re the thrill of the first night in a new place. The excitement of the next morning. The friends you encounter. The journeys you take. The sights you see. And the memories you make. Through our products, partners and people, we make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

Role Description:

As a Machine Learning Engineer (MLE I), you contribute significantly to ML projects, taking ownership of tasks and driving them to completion. You are expected to work independently and proactively, leveraging your technical expertise to solve complex problems while collaborating closely with your team. You focus on technical execution and continuous learning, contributing to our engineering culture by sharing knowledge and insights.

Understanding our travelers is a top priority at Booking. With millions of accommodations, flights, taxis, attractions, and car rentals available on our platform, we help people around the world find the best options for their journeys. Achieving this requires a deep understanding of traveler preferences, including those explicitly expressed through searches and filters, as well as those inferred from behavioral signals such as clicks and bookings. We also need to accurately interpret traveler intent: Why are they on our platform right now? Are they exploring options or already close to making a decision? Are they continuing a previous session, possibly on another device? And are they extending an existing trip as part of a Connected Trip, or starting an entirely new one?

The Traveler Intelligence track, part of Booking.com’s Marketplace organization, develops the core capabilities that make personalization at scale possible. It brings together traveler data and behavioral signals into a unified, real-time understanding of each traveler, enabling every product surface and AI-driven interaction to become more relevant and timely. By applying advanced Data & AI techniques to interpret behavior and uncover intent, the track helps deliver more personalized, seamless, end-to-end experiences across the entire Booking platform.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties: 

• Develop production-grade ML systems, from models to features and pipelines, accounting for reliability, scalability, real-time requirements, monitoring and retraining.
• Build readable and reusable code, applying code quality best practices and using standard libraries. Choose the right technology or coding methodology as well as refactor and simplify code when necessary.
• Take full ownership of your services end to end by actively monitoring the systems health, performance and business impact.
• Be responsible for business related data governance processes, the technical implementation and maintenance of data processing services and storage systems, and the implementation and maintenance of ML governance processes.
• Evaluate possible architecture solutions taking into account the business and technology requirements.
• Set the relevant service level objectives SLOs and act accordingly when they are not met.
• Build readable and reusable code, using the right technologies and coding methodologies applying knowledge of business area tools and product needs.
• Continuously evolve your craft by keeping up to date with the latest developments in ML/AI and related technologies and upskilling on these, as needed.
• Contribute to the internal ML/AI community by sharing your knowledge and participating in our internal ML programs.
• Coach others through evidence and clear communication, explaining advanced technical concepts in simpler terms.
• Maintain a highly cross-disciplinary perspective, solving issues by applying approaches and methods from across a variety of disciplines and related fields.
• Achieve mutually agreeable solutions by staying adaptable, communicating ideas in clear coherent language and practicing active listening 

Qualifications & Skills:

• 2+ years of relevant work experience (or equivalent), involved with the application of Machine Learning to business problems in a commercial environment.
• Experience in areas like e.g. Recommender Systems, Deep Learning, Information Retrieval, Computer Vision, Speech Recognition, Causal Inference, MLOps, etc.
• Work experience (or equivalent), involved with the application of Machine Learning to business problems, preferably in a commercial environment.
• Knowledge of multiple machine learning facets, such as working with large data sets, experimentation, scalability and optimization.
• Experience with data-driven product development: analytics, A/B testing, etc.
• Strong working experience in one or more general purpose programming languages; experience with Python and Spark
• Experience of version control systems
• Excellent English communication skills, both written and verbal

Benefits & Perks - Global Impact, Personal Relevance:

Booking.com’s Total Rewards Philosophy is not only about compensation but also about benefits. We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, as well unique-to-Booking.com benefits which include:

• Annual paid time off and generous paid leave scheme including: parent, grandparent, bereavement, and care leave
• Hybrid working including flexible working arrangements, and up to 20 days per year working from abroad (home country)
• Industry leading product discounts - up to 1400 per year - for yourself, including automatic Genius Level 3 status and Booking.com wallet credit 
• Living and working in Amsterdam, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe
• Contributing to a high scale, complex, world renowned product and seeing real-time impact of your work on millions of travelers worldwide
• Working in a fast-paced and performance driven culture
• Opportunity to utilize technical expertise, leadership capabilities and entrepreneurial spirit
• Promote and drive impactful and innovative engineering solutions
• Technical, behavioral and interpersonal competence advancement via on-the-job opportunities, experimental projects, hackathons, conferences and active community participation
• Competitive compensation and benefits package and some great added perks of working in the home city of Booking.com

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) at Booking.com: 

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion have been a core part of our company culture since day one. This ongoing journey starts with our very own employees, who represent over 140 nationalities and a wide range of ethnic and social backgrounds, genders and sexual orientations. 

Take it from our Chief People Officer, Paulo Pisano: “At Booking.com, the diversity of our people doesn’t just build an outstanding workplace, it also creates a better and more inclusive travel experience for everyone. Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do. It’s a place where you can make your mark and have a real impact in travel and tech.” 

We ensure that colleagues with disabilities are provided the adjustments and tools they need to participate in the job application and interview process, to perform crucial job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment.

Application Process: 

This section should provide: 

• Let’s go places together: How we Hire
• This role does not come with relocation assistance.

Booking.com is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. 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. We strive to move well beyond traditional equal opportunity and work to create an environment that allows everyone to thrive.

Recommender Systems, Deep Learning, Information Retrieval, Computer Vision, Speech Recognition, Causal Inference, MLOps, Python, SQL, PyTorch, Spark, Snowflake 

If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.