Machine Learning Manager - Performance Marketing

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.

About the team: The Performance Marketing team builds and optimizes large‑scale ML models for online bidding across all major OTAs, owning one of the industry's largest performance and auction strategies to keep Booking.com competitive. We run end‑to‑end research‑to‑production cycles-from POCs and modeling to large‑scale A/B testing-driving measurable impact by optimizing auction levers at scale.

Role Description: A key leadership role in Booking.com Performance Marketing department. You will lead a team of experienced Machine Learning Scientists, accountable for driving the next strategic directions for optimizing Booking.com online bidding strategy on top of the most prominent online travel agencies, managing one of the largest performance marketing budgets in the industry, and ensuring Bookings.com's competitive edge in the complex dynamics of the bidding marketplace and online auction mechanisms. This role requires a unique combination of deep theoretical expertise around optimization methodologies, auction theory and state of the art machine learning, together with extensive experience in driving solutions for real-world large scale optimization problems and business products.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties

• Leadership in developing the next strategic solutions and driving business impact for bidding and optimization of Booking ads on top of the leading online travel agencies - lead, coach and mentor a team of machine learning scientists at a fast pace environment of innovation and development of machine learning and optimization algorithms tailored to the performance marketing domain.
• Leadership in innovation management of the research cycle, involving POC, model development and large-scale AB testing phases, for driving customer engagement while maximizing the efficiency of performance marketing spend.
• Continuously driving measurable business impact, fully utilizing the various optimization levers in the bidding and optimization space
• Driving a culture of protagonism, ownership and craft excellence within the team and foster close collaborative relationships between the team and the larger organization
• Continuously grow and develop the talent in the team and facilitate ways of working that foster the foundations on top of which the team can deliver business impact
• Extensively work together with senior management to align on business objectives and financial goals

• Proven record in leading applicative research teams which own the development of innovative machine learning and optimization solutions for large-scale domains.
• Proficiency in large-scale optimization methodologies and auction mechanisms
• Proven record of teams development and building and maintaining a culture of high-pace innovation
• Proven Impact: A track record of delivering measurable business value through the development and implementation of large-scale machine learning models.
• Strong working knowledge of Python, SQL/BigQuery, Spark
• Excellent communication skills
• Level of Education: Master's degree or PhD required (Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Artificial Intelligence, Physics)

• 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

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