Head of Applied & ML Science for Search, Personalization, and Advertising

Wayfair’s Search, Marketing, and Recommendations Technology team provides the core platforms and services that allow our customers to find the products they love by serving the right content to every customer on every touchpoint, both on Wayfair and offsite through our marketing programs.  Our systems leverage Wayfair’s extensive customer and product data to create 1-1 personalized experiences and redefine how customers shop for their homes.

The Head of Applied & Machine Learning Science will be responsible for growing and leading a high performing team of scientists using cutting edge ML/AI techniques to build new discovery experiences. Your work will touch all of Wayfair’s customers and will be the glue that holds Wayfair’s platform together, helping customers find their perfect items while incentivizing supplier behaviors and driving Wayfair’s profitability. In this highly strategic and visible role, you will partner closely with stakeholders across our technology and business orgs, with significant exposure to executive leadership.  This role presents significant technical and leadership opportunities with enormous potential for innovation and business impact.  

What You’ll Do:

• Craft the overarching strategy for the evolution of machine learning models that redefine search, personalization, and marketing channels on Wayfair’s platform.
• Champion personalization at every digital touchpoint, ensuring a unique discovery experience from search to checkout. 
• Forge alliances with senior leaders across technology, product, and business units, playing a crucial role in charting Wayfair’s growth path. 
• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of dedicated machine learning professionals, setting clear objectives and fostering a culture of innovation and excellence.

What You’ll Need:

Professional Experience and Skills:

• Proven track record in leading teams of 75+ members.
• Extensive experience in machine learning leadership, especially in NLP, deep learning, personalization, recommender systems, information retrieval, and advertising systems. 
• Experience leading and overseeing the full Machine Learning Science life-cycle from conception to prototyping, testing, deploying, and measuring its overall business value.
• Proven track record of leading teams in the build out of quantitative models, leveraging machine learning and advanced data analysis techniques.
• A strong network to attract and recruit top talent.
• Ability to cohesively manage and integrate multiple workstreams.
• 10+ years of experience in a quantitative or technical work environment.
• Advanced degree (PhD) in a quantitative field preferred (e.g. mathematics, economics, computer science, engineering, physics, neuroscience, operations research, etc).

Personal Attributes:

• A sharp sense of trade-offs and ability to engage effectively with different business-focused teams.
• Demonstrated ability to innovate while balancing business strategy.
• Proven expertise in guiding teams through technical challenges.
• Ability to build strong partnership with business, product and engineering teams.
• Ability to effectively work with business leads: strong communication skills, ability to synthesize conclusions for non-experts and desire to influence business decisions.
• Ability to thrive in a dynamic environment where there can be degrees of ambiguity.
• Ability to motivate and lead high performing, technical teams effectively, ensuring they want to bring their best to Wayfair.

The base salary for this position is $228,000-$240,000; however, base pay offered may vary depending on location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Restricted stock units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the position offered. This information is provided per the California Salary Transparency Law.