Senior Data Scientist - Algorithms, Aircover

The Community You Will Join:

Airbnb is a mission-driven company dedicated to helping create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. Travel is rewarding, but sometimes things don’t go as expected. AirCover aims to provide a peace of mind for your whole trip from booking until you’re back home. As a Data Scientist working on AirCover, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with a strong team of engineers, product managers, designers and operation specialists to build scalable and robust systems to detect, mediate, and solve issues across a wide spectrum, and optimize personalized presentation of our product.

The Difference You Will Make:

For this role, we’re seeking a machine learning expert to join the AirCover Data Science team, and have a direct opportunity to contribute, influence, and lead by designing scalable scientific solutions for problems like: 

• Detect intents across various entry points with large scale unstructured data using machine learning, NLP or computer vision methods
• Optimize presentation of AirCover products through designing thoughtful user segmentation and personalization
• Summarize customer journey and conversations with foundational or fine tuned large language models (LLM) to understand user pain points
• Recommend the right product at the right time that provides peace of mind for customer

A Typical Day: 

• Identify high impact business opportunities through data exploration and model prototype, translate business problem into scientific formulations  
• Work collaboratively with cross functional partners including software engineers, product managers, operations and research, to refine requirements for machine learning models, drive scientific decisions, and quantify impact
• Hands-on develop, productionize, and operate machine learning models and pipelines at scale, including both batch and real-time use cases, structured and unstructured data
• Build reusable, high-performing, scalable machine learning models with internal paved path tooling, incorporating third-party information and state-of-the-art innovations
• Regularly present work internally at monthly meetings to technical, engineering and product stakeholders to iterate and generate excitement on roadmap progress
• Publish externally and engage with the scientific community to advance Airbnb’s standing

Your Expertise:

• 5+ years of relevant industry experience (e.g. ML scientist, tech lead, junior faculty) and a Master’s degree or PhD in relevant fields
• Hands-on ‘builder’ experience with personalization and recommendation problems. Also a plus, proficiency with LLMs and/or related AI, NLP, CV, UGC/content understanding topics including deep learning, information retrieval, or knowledge extraction. For example, BERT, GPT-2/3/4, LLaMA, Mistral
• Strong fluency in Python and SQL, experience with Tensorflow, PyTorch, Airflow and data warehouse
• Deep understanding of Machine Learning lifecycle best practices (eg. training/serving, feature engineering, feature/model selection, labeling, A/B test), algorithms (eg. gradient boosted trees, neural networks/deep learning, optimization) and domains (eg. natural language processing, computer vision, personalization and recommendation)
• Proven ability to communicate clearly and effectively to audiences of varying technical levels, observation causal inference skill is a plus
• Proven mix of strong intellectual curiosity with high level of pragmatism and engagement with the technical community. Publications or presentations in recognized journals/conferences is a plus
• Ability to take a product-oriented mindset in using conceptual and innovative thinking to develop and apply solutions taking into consideration the user experience

Your Location:

This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Click here for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list. If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from.

Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belonging:

Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: reasonableaccommodations@airbnb.com. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process. 

We ask that you only reach out to us if you are a candidate whose disability prevents you from being able to complete our online application.