Senior Machine Learning Engineer / Team Lead - GenAI (Computer Vision)

The Tripadvisor Machine Learning Team is looking for an exceptional individual to lead a team working on designing and building next-generation AI systems to understand our travelers and products and improve customer experience. Our work will significantly improve our ability to offer travelers the broadest, most relevant travel products.

You will work on a team on computer vision tasks alongside other talented machine learning engineers. Our initiatives aim to enhance how we use image and video formats, from object detection to semantic image search. This foundational work directly impacts how travelers explore our content and ultimately plan their dream vacation! You'll work with cutting-edge technologies including LLM for vision tasks and GenAI.

Tripadvisor is the web's leading travel information site. At Tripadvisor, the Machine Learning Team creates systems that influence the travel decisions of millions of people per day. It applies cutting-edge machine learning techniques to a wide variety of areas, including recommenders, vision, information retrieval, and natural language processing. To ensure continued success, Tripadvisor promotes a culture of personal development, including social activities, journal clubs, memberships in online learning resources, and participation in industry conferences. Have a great time while shaping the future of travel!

What You Will Do

• Lead and mentor a team of machine learning engineers, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning.


• Lead the design, development, and deployment of computer vision models and systems in production. Work on a wide range of projects including image classification, learning-to-rank, image tagging, image captioning, OCR, and image personalization.


• Set clear goals and expectations for the team, and provide regular feedback and coaching to help them grow both technically and professionally.


• Develop and implement strategies to attract, retain, and develop top talent in the machine learning engineering field.


• Oversee the end-to-end development and deployment of machine learning models and systems, ensuring high quality, reliability, and scalability.


• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including product managers, software engineers, and data scientists to define project requirements, timelines, and deliverables.


• Monitor project progress, identify risks and challenges, and proactively take steps to address them to ensure successful project outcomes.


• Provide technical guidance and expertise to the team, helping to solve complex technical challenges and drive innovation in machine learning algorithms and techniques.


• Stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in machine learning research and technology, and leverage this knowledge to inform decision-making and drive improvements in our products and processes.


• Foster a culture of experimentation and exploration, encouraging the team to explore new ideas and approaches to solving problems.


• Communicate effectively with key stakeholders, including senior leadership, to provide updates on project status, solicit feedback, and align on strategic priorities.


• Act as a liaison between the machine learning engineering team and other departments, ensuring alignment and collaboration on cross-functional initiatives.


• Drive continuous improvement initiatives to optimize team processes, tools, and workflows, with a focus on efficiency, scalability, and quality.


• Foster a culture of data-driven decision-making, leveraging metrics and analytics to measure performance, identify areas for improvement, and drive actionable insights.
  
  You are an experienced and passionate leader with a deep understanding of machine learning and a track record of success in building and managing high-performing teams.


• You possess strong technical expertise in machine learning algorithms and frameworks, combined with excellent communication and interpersonal skills.


• You thrive in a fast-paced and collaborative environment, and you are driven by a desire to drive innovation and deliver impactful solutions.


• You are a strategic thinker with a growth mindset, always seeking opportunities for continuous learning and improvement.


• You are excited about the prospect of leading a talented team of machine learning engineers to tackle complex challenges and drive innovation in the field., Ph.D. or Masters degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.


• 6+ years of experience in machine learning engineering or a related field.


• Experience solving problems in some of the following areas: computer vision (classification, regression, segmentation),, transfer learning, in-context learning (zero-shot, few-shot etc.), information retrieval..


• Proficiency in Python and experience with machine learning libraries such as PyTorch/TensorFlow/Jax, openCV, PIL/Pillow, timm, Hugging Face Transformers, etc.


• Strong understanding of machine learning algorithms and techniques, including deep learning, reinforcement learning, and natural language processing.


• Solid foundation of data structures and algorithms.


• Experience following Software Engineering best practices, including source control, code reviews, CI/CD, and automated testing.


• Ability to write efficient and maintainable SQL queries.


• Experience deploying machine learning models in production environments using cloud platforms such as AWS or GCP, using Docker and Kubernetes.


• Experience with distributed computing: Snowflake, Apache Spark, Ray.


• Experience with databases like Snowflake, ElasticSearch, DynamoDB, Qdrant.


• Experience building data pipelines using tools like Kubeflow, Argo, and Jenkins.


• Experience with model tracking and deployment tools like MLFlow, Seldon, and Sagemaker.


• Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail.


• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to work effectively in a collaborative team environment.