Machine Learning Manager

About this role:

We are looking for an experienced ML team manager to lead our product and content recommendation team focused on building intelligent ML-based recommender systems (e.g. item-2-item, home page, email and category pages) for Wayfair. You will own the core recommendation systems that power across all of our surfaces, delivering relevant and engaging content and product recommendations that unlock significant commercial value and contribute directly to Wayfair’s bottom line. You will partner closely with backend engineers and data scientists to overcome some of Wayfair’s most intellectually challenging machine learning, latency, and scalability problems. 

Wayfair’s SMART (Search, Marketing, and Recommendations Technology) team is at the forefront of shaping how millions of customers discover and engage with products. We leverage cutting-edge machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data-driven strategies to deliver personalized shopping experiences. As a member of our SMART team, you’ll be responsible for designing, implementing, and optimizing systems that enhance search capabilities, develop highly relevant product recommendations, and drive innovative SOTA solutions.

What you’ll do:

• Lead our Recommendations team within the Search and Recs Machine Learning group responsible for building and maintaining systems that power recommendations across all surfaces on our site, our app, email, and push and drive substantive business value.
• Hire, develop, and coach a talented team of ML scientists to build scalable ML decisioning systems that directly contribute to Wayfair’s bottom-line
• Partner closely with cross-functional partners across engineering, data science and product to develop science strategy and roadmap for recommendations systems
• Design, build, deploy and refine extensible, reusable, large-scale, and real-world platforms that improve customer experience
• Build robust monitoring, alerting, and edge-case handling mechanisms.
• Collaborate closely across multiple science and engineering teams to develop SOTA recommendation technologies and  drive robust integration to launch improving customer experiences.
• Research new developments in sort and recommendations research and open-source packages, and incorporate them into our internal packages and systems.

Who you are:

• 6+ years of experience (ideally with 2+ YOE as lead/manager) building advanced machine learning models that solve real-world problems
• Strong theoretical grasp of machine learning concepts combined with hands-on expertise deploying web-scale ML-based decision-making systems into production
• Hands-on and technical manager who can engage deeply with both core algorithm development and system design & architecture
• Experience with data-driven opportunity sizing & prioritization and bias towards building things iteratively (and learning as we go)
• You are comfortable making complex decisions (even when faced with ambiguity), making pragmatic tradeoffs, and using goal-setting frameworks (e.g. OKRs)
• You have a track record of coaching and mentoring junior ML scientist and engineers -- ranging from fresh PhD graduates to experience ML scientist
• Experience working with commercial stakeholders to translate business objectives to appropriately-scoped ML model/system and ensuring commercial and ML objectives remain tightly aligned
• Strong written & verbal communication skills and ability to influence senior-level stakeholders and steer overall strategy based on data-driven recommendations and analysis
• Familiarity with ML model development frameworks, ML orchestration and pipelines with experience in either Airflow, Kubeflow or MLFlow as well as Spark, Kubernetes, Docker, Python, and SQL.
• Nice to have:
  • Experience building core recommendations systems for eCommerce and/or other 2-sided marketplaces
  • Experience with online learning, RL, or ML-based control systems
    
    

Why You’ll Love Wayfair: 

• Time Off:
• Paid Holidays
• Paid Time Off (PTO)
• Health & Wellness:
• Full Health Benefits (Medical, Dental, Vision, HSA/FSA)
• Life Insurance
• Disability Protection (Short Term & Long Term Disability) 
• Global Wellbeing: Gym/Fitness discounts (including US Peloton, Global ClassPass, and various regional gym memberships)
• Mental Health Support (Global Mental Health, Global Wayhealthy Recordings)
• Caregiver Services
• Financial Growth & Security:
• 401K Matching (Employee Matching Program)
• Tuition Reimbursement 
• Financial Health Education (Knowledge of Financial Education - KOFE)
• Tax Advantaged Accounts
• Family Support:
• Family Planning Support
• Parental Leave
• Global Surrogacy & Adoption Policy
• Professional Development & Recognition:
• Rewards & Recognition 
• Global Employee Anniversary Awards 
• Paid Volunteer Work 
• Unique Perks:
• Employee Discount 
• U.S. Bluebikes Membership
• Global Pod Outings
• Work/Life Balance:
• Emphasizing a supportive & flexible work environment that encourages a balance between personal and professional commitments

Massachusetts Applicants: I understand that it is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.