Machine Learning Manager - Advertising Science

About This Role

We are looking for an experienced ML manager to lead a team focused on building intelligent ML-based bidding systems (e.g., tROAS, dynamic bidding, smart campaigns) for Wayfair’s sponsored products advertising business. You will have the opportunity to build 0-to-1 capabilities that unlock significant commercial value and contribute directly to Wayfair’s bottom line. You will partner closely with very talented engineers and scientists to overcome some of Wayfair’s most intellectually challenging machine learning, latency, and scalability problems.

Wayfair's Customer Technology organization is at the forefront of shaping how millions of customers discover and engage with products. We leverage cutting‑edge machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data‑driven strategies to deliver personalized shopping experiences. As a member of our organization, you'll be part of a team designing, implementing, and optimizing systems that optimize advertising goals, enhance search capabilities, develop highly relevant product recommendations, and drive innovative marketing solutions.

• Lead our Intelligent Bidding pod within the Advertising Science Machine Learning group responsible for building 0-to-1 intelligent bidding capabilities (e.g. target ROAS, dynamic bidding, etc.) for Wayfair’s advertising platform.
• Hire, develop, and coach a talented team of ML scientists to build scalable ML decisioning systems that directly contribute to Wayfair’s bottom‑line.
• Partner closely with cross‑functional partners across engineering, science, analytics and product to develop science strategy and roadmap for Supplier Ads bidding systems.
• Design, build, deploy and refine extensible, reusable, large‑scale, and real‑world platforms that improve supplier experience, ROAS, and spend on Wayfair’s Sponsored Products.
• Build robust monitoring, alerting, and edge‑case handling mechanisms.
• Collaborate closely across multiple science and engineering teams to drive robust integration of our smart bidding platform with the existing infrastructure & systems.
• Research new developments in advertising, sort and recommendation research and open‑source packages, and incorporate them into our internal packages & systems.

• 6+ years of experience (ideally with 2+ YOE as lead/manager) building advanced machine learning models that solve real‑world problems.
• Strong theoretical grasp of machine learning concepts combined with hands‑on expertise deploying web‑scale ML‑based decision‑making systems into production.
• Hands‑on and technical manager who can engage deeply with both core algorithm development and system design & architecture.
• Experience with data‑driven opportunity sizing & prioritization and bias towards building things iteratively (and learning as we go).
• You are comfortable making complex decisions (even when faced with ambiguity), making pragmatic tradeoffs, and using goal‑setting frameworks (e.g. OKRs).
• You have a track record of coaching and mentoring junior ML scientists and engineers — ranging from fresh PhD graduates to experienced ML scientists.
• Experience working with commercial stakeholders to translate business objectives to appropriately‑scoped ML model/system and ensuring commercial and ML objectives remain tightly aligned.
• Strong written & verbal communication skills and ability to influence senior‑level stakeholders and steer overall strategy based on data‑driven recommendations & analysis.
• Familiarity with ML model development frameworks, ML orchestration and pipelines with experience in either Airflow, Kubeflow or MLFlow as well as Spark, Kubernetes, Docker, Python, and SQL.
• Nice to have:
  • Experience building intelligent bidding and/or advertising systems (e.g. CPC bidding, tROAS, etc.) for eCommerce and/or other 2‑sided marketplaces.
  • Experience with online learning, RL, or ML‑based control systems.

• Time Off:
  Paid Holidays, Paid Time Off (PTO)
• Health & Wellness:
  Full Health Benefits (Medical, Dental, Vision, HSA/FSA), Life Insurance, Disability Protection (Short Term & Long Term Disability), Global Wellbeing:
  Gym/Fitness discounts (including US Peloton, Global Class Pass, and various…