Senior Machine Learning Scientist - Recommendations

About the role

We are looking for an experienced Senior Machine Learning Scientist to join our Content Recommendations team. In this role, you will be at the core of building and optimizing ML-based recommender systems (e.g., image and content recommendations, homepage and email optimization and personalization) to enhance the customer experience at Wayfair. Your work will directly impact how millions of customers discover and engage with products, driving significant business value.

Responsibilities

• Develop and optimize recommendation models that power personalized experiences across Wayfair’s site, app, email, and push notifications.
• Conduct applied research to improve recommender systems using traditional ML techniques, deep learning and reinforcement learning.
• Build scalable ML pipelines for training, evaluation, and inference, ensuring models operate efficiently in production.
• Work closely with engineering teams to deploy models in a production environment, addressing real-world constraints such as latency, interpretability, and scalability.
• Analyze model performance and iterate based on A/B test results, offline evaluation metrics, and business impact.
• Leverage and contribute to open-source ML frameworks while staying up to date with cutting-edge research in recommendation systems.
• Drive innovation by identifying opportunities to improve personalization strategies and developing novel algorithms that enhance customer engagement.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including product managers, software engineers, and data scientists to align ML objectives with business goals.
• Mentor other less experienced scientists on the team

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience developing and deploying machine learning models, with a focus on recommendations, ranking, or personalization.
• Strong theoretical understanding of machine learning and deep learning applied to large-scale recommendation problems.
• Experience in training, evaluating, and optimizing recommendation models in production, leveraging techniques such as collaborative filtering, sequence modeling, representation learning and multi-armed bandits.
• Proficiency in Python and experience with ML frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Scikit-Learn.
• Familiarity with big data processing (Spark, Hadoop) and ML pipeline orchestration (Airflow, Kubeflow, MLflow).
• Strong coding skills and familiarity with building scalable ML systems in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Able to design experiments and analyze results using A/B testing and statistical techniques.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex ML concepts to non-technical stakeholders and drive data-driven decisions.

Qualifications

• Nice to have: Experience developing core recommendation systems for eCommerce, marketplaces, or streaming platforms; Familiarity with reinforcement learning or contextual bandits for adaptive recommendation strategies.

Skills

• Experience with machine learning and deep learning applied to large-scale recommendation problems.
• Ability to design and implement scalable ML pipelines.
• Strong coding skills and proficiency in Python.
• Familiarity with big data processing and ML pipeline orchestration tools.
• Experience with A/B testing and statistical analysis.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

Benefits

The above base pay range may vary depending on location, job-related knowledge, skills and experience. The range listed is just one component of Wayfair’s total compensation package for employees. Depending on the position offered, equity, bonuses, commissions and other forms of compensation may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to a comprehensive suite of medical, financial and additional benefits.

Pay

Annual Base Pay: USD 300,000.00 - USD 300,000.00

Schedule

Hybrid work schedule: Work in the office on designated days, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and work remotely the other 2 days of the week.

Company Information

Wayfair is one of the world’s largest online destinations for the home. Whether you work in our global headquarters in Boston, or in our warehouses or offices throughout the world, we’re reinventing the way people shop for their homes. Through our commitment to industry-leading technology and creative problem-solving, we are confident that Wayfair will be home to the most rewarding work of your career. If you’re looking for rapid growth, constant learning, and dynamic challenges, then you’ll find that amazing career opportunities are knocking.

About Wayfair Inc.

Wayfair is one of the world’s largest online destinations for the home. Whether you work in our global headquarters in Boston, or in our warehouses or offices throughout the world, we’re reinventing the way people shop for their homes. Through our commitment to industry-leading technology and creative problem-solving, we are confident that Wayfair will be home to the most rewarding work of your career. If you’re looking for rapid growth, constant learning, and dynamic challenges, then you’ll find that amazing career opportunities are knocking.

Equal Opportunity Employer

We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome diversity in our workplace. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship status, marital status, disability, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected characteristic.