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About This Role
At Expedia Group, we help travelers explore the world, one journey at a time. As a global travel company powered by passionate people, trusted partnerships, and leading technology, we connect travelers, partners, and advertisers through our consumer brands, B2B network, and travel advertising business.
Here, you'll do meaningful work that helps millions of people discover, book, and experience travel with more ease, confidence, and joy. Our five Behaviors\-Traveler First, Think Big, Operate with Excellence, Ownership Mindset, and Succeed Together\-help foster a supportive environment where people can grow their careers and have the flexibility, benefits, and support to do their best work. Join us and build for travelers everywhere.
Sr. Machine Learning Scientist, Agentic AI \& GenAI Systems (Growth Marketing)
We create and deliver tailored marketing strategies for Expedia Group’s brands, focusing on establishing strong connections and cohesive experiences for travelers and partners. We leverage our functional expertise and creative excellence to build trust and loyalty for our brands through innovative marketing approaches and technology.
Our Growth Marketing team is redefining how AI\-driven, agentic automation meets data\-powered marketing. We build production\-ready multimodal LLMs, GenAI, and agentic architectures that power personalized travel discovery, real\-time cross\-platform campaign execution, and interactive chatbots/UIs. For example, “Trip Matching” on Instagram transforms inspiring reels and posts into instant hotel recommendations, powered entirely by our production AI.
We are looking for a hands\-on Senior Machine Learning Scientist who thrives on building end\-to\-end systems , from backend architecture to user\-facing interfaces , including agentic UX/UI, observability, and product integration .
In this role, you will:
- Architect, build, and ship enterprise\-scale GenAI, RAG, and multi\-agent systems end\-to\-end , including frontend, backend, and user interfaces.
- Design hierarchical multi\-agent ecosystems with Interactive Generative UIs, dashboards, and safety/observability features (e.g., UI is generated on\-the\-fly by an agent in response to what the user need )
- Develop memory architectures: short\-term contextual memory, long\-term episodic memory, knowledge graph augmentation, and adaptive retrieval systems.
- Lead hands\-on implementation of RAG pipelines, vector memory systems, and agent orchestration frameworks (LangChain, LangSmith, AutoGen, OpenAI/Claude Agents SDK, etc) and advanced evaluation platforms leveraging LLM\-as\-a\-Judge, synthetic data generation, and agent trajectory assessment.
- Train, fine\-tune, adapt (LoRA/QLoRA/adapters), and distill LLMs, including RLHF/DPO, for production\-ready chatbots and GenAI products.
- Build multimodal pipelines integrating vision, audio, text, and structured data , optimizing for scalability and latency .
- Build and deploy large\-scale behavioral embedding systems that learn traveler representations from billions of search, booking, web, app, loyalty, and marketing interactions, leveraging distributed representation learning and real\-time serving to power personalization, audience targeting, propensity models, and next\-best\-action recommendations.
- Collaborate with product, and engineering teams to create intuitive, user\-friendly interfaces and ensure seamless end\-to\-end user experiences.
- Mentor engineers and ML scientists, set technical standards, conduct design reviews, and contribute to the organization’s technical maturity.
- Represent the Org externally via open\-source contributions, patents, conferences, and publications .
Experience and Qualifications:
- 10\+ years in software engineering, ML, and AI systems, with production GenAI deployments.
- Deep expertise in LLM training, adaptation, distillation, RLHF/DPO, and RAG systems.
- Solid foundation in NLP and experience with multimodal AI systems (vision\-language models)
- Proven experience building and operating multi\-agent AI platforms with observability and safety frameworks (self\-hosted orchestration using frameworks such as LangGraph integrated with LLM APIs such as Claude).
- Strong background in distributed GPU training and inference, cloud infrastructure (AWS/Azure), container orchestration, and ML tooling.
- Demonstrated ability to lead end\-to\-end AI product development and collaborate with product and design teams to ship user\-facing features.
- Excellent communication skills, able to present complex architecture and product concepts to executives.
Nice To Have:
- PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field.
- Recognized industry presence through publications, patents, talks, or open\-source contributions in LLMs, RAG, or agentic systems.
- Experience integrating multimodal LLM systems (vision, audio, music, structured data).
- Leadership in GenAI safety, evaluation, testing, and monitoring.
- Strong cross\-disciplinary fluency in modeling, infrastructure, product, and design.
The total cash range for this position in Seattle is $173,000\.00 to $242,500\.00\. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $277,000\.00, which is the top of the range, based on ongoing, demonstrated, and sustained performance in the role.
Starting pay for this role will vary based on multiple factors, including location, available budget, and an individual’s knowledge, skills, and experience. Pay ranges may be modified in the future.
Benefits and perks
Expedia Group offers benefits and perks designed to support employees and their families, including medical, dental, and vision coverage, paid time off, an Employee Assistance Program, wellness and travel reimbursement, travel discounts, and International Airlines Travel Agent Network (IATAN) membership. Learn more about life at Expedia Group at https://careers.expediggroup.com/life .
Accommodation requests
Expedia Group is committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruiting experience. If you need an accommodation or adjustment due to a disability during the application or recruiting process, please submit a request at https://expedia.service\-now.com/askeg?id\=job\_accommodation .
About Expedia Group
Expedia Group includes three flagship consumer brands \- Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo \- along with a leading B2B travel business and travel advertising offerings. Across our brands and business, we help travelers explore the world with confidence and ease.
Important notice
Employment opportunities and job offers at Expedia Group will always come from Expedia Group's Talent Acquisition and hiring teams. Never share sensitive personal information unless you are confident of the recipient. Expedia Group does not extend job offers via email or messaging tools to individuals with whom we have not made prior contact. Our email domain is @expediagroup.com. The official place to find and apply for roles is https://careers.expediagroup.com/jobs/ .
Equal Opportunity
Expedia is committed to creating an inclusive work environment with a diverse workforce. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. This employer participates in E\-Verify. The employer will provide the Social Security Administration (SSA) and, if necessary, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with information from each new employee's I\-9 to confirm work authorization.
Salary Context
This $173K-$277K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $180K across 1841 roles with salary data).
View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 3,708 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 70% of the market. At Expedia Group, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills Required
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $218,750 based on 3,817 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $230,000. Disclosed range: $173K to $277K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($300,000) and Research Engineer ($280,000). By seniority level: Entry: $120,000; Mid: $200,000; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,150; VP: $250,000.
Expedia Group AI Hiring
Expedia Group has 6 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across Data Scientist, AI/ML Engineer, AI Product Manager. Positions span Seattle, WA, US, Austin, TX, US, San Jose, CA, US. Compensation range: $196K - $299K.
Location Context
AI roles in Seattle pay a median of $236,900 across 267 tracked positions. That's 9% above the national median.
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 3,708 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 102 entry-level, 1,705 mid-level, 1,469 senior, and 432 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 14% of the market (508 positions). The remaining 3,180 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($300,000 median, 21 roles); Research Engineer ($280,000 median, 147 roles); AI Architect ($254,798 median, 67 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 3,708 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,605), Data Scientist (310), AI Software Engineer (259). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (102) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,705) and senior (1,469) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 432 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 14% of all AI roles (508 positions), with 3,180 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $217,500. Top-quartile roles start at $272,100, and the 90th percentile reaches $325,000. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $300,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,890 postings), Aws (1,103 postings), Azure (877 postings), Rag (855 postings), Gcp (631 postings), Prompt Engineering (560 postings), Pytorch (545 postings), Claude (498 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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