Staff Data Scientist, Search & Personalization

About Engine
At Engine, we’re transforming business travel into something personalized, rewarding, and simple. For too long, managing travel and spend has been overwhelming and fragmented — we’re here to change that. We believe the future of travel should be seamless and powered by technology that delights customers at every step. That’s why we’re building a platform that brings together corporate travel, a powerful charge card, and modern spend management in one place.

To make this vision real, we’re looking for exceptional, mission-driven people to help redefine how businesses manage and experience travel.

More than 17,000 companies already rely on Engine to support over 1 million travelers and billions in annual bookings each year. Cash flow positive with rapid growth, we pair exclusive Engine-only rates, industry-leading rewards, and intelligent automation to help businesses save money while delivering world-class personalization and convenience.

Backed by Telescope Partners, Blackstone, and Permira, Engine has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing travel and fintech platforms in North America, with honors including the Deloitte Fast 500 and Built In’s Best Places to Work.

Be a Founding Member of Our Search Intelligence Team We're building a world-class data science team focused on transforming how millions of business travelers discover and book their perfect trips. As a founding member of this team, you'll architect the search and personalization systems that power Engine's core user experience. This is a unique opportunity to build sophisticated ML systems from the ground up, directly impacting conversion rates and customer satisfaction at scale.

Your Mission:
As a Staff Data Scientist specializing in Search and Personalization at Engine, you'll lead the charge in creating intelligent, adaptive systems that understand and anticipate traveler needs. Here's what you'll take charge of:

• Architect and build Engine's personalization engine from the ground up, implementing state-of-the-art recommendation systems, collaborative filtering, and deep learning models to deliver hyper-relevant search results and travel recommendations.
• Drive search conversion optimization through advanced ranking algorithms, query understanding, and real-time personalization, directly impacting Engine's core business metrics.
• Lead the development of user embedding and preference modeling systems that capture complex traveler behaviors, corporate policies, and contextual signals to power personalized experiences across the platform.
• Build and mentor a world-class data science team as a founding member, establishing best practices, technical standards, and a culture of experimentation and innovation.
• Partner with product, engineering, and business leaders to define the search and personalization roadmap, translating business objectives into sophisticated ML solutions.
• Design and implement A/B testing frameworks and experimentation infrastructure to rapidly iterate on personalization strategies and measure impact.
• Develop real-time inference systems that can deliver personalized results at scale with sub-second latency requirements.

What You’ll Bring to Engine: We're looking for a proven leader in personalization and search who's ready to build something extraordinary:

• Experience: 7+ years of industry experience in data science/ML engineering, with at least 4+ years specifically focused on search, ranking, and personalization systems at scale.
• Personalization Expertise: Deep hands-on experience with recommendation systems, including collaborative filtering, content-based filtering, hybrid approaches, and modern deep learning techniques (neural collaborative filtering, transformer-based models, two-tower architectures).
• Search & Ranking Knowledge: Proven track record building learning-to-rank models, query understanding systems, and search relevance optimization in production environments.
• Technical Excellence: Expert-level proficiency in Python (PyTorch/TensorFlow), distributed computing (Spark), and modern ML infrastructure. Experience with real-time serving systems and vector databases.
• Leadership & Vision: Experience as a technical lead or founding member of a data science team, with the ability to balance hands-on contribution with strategic thinking and team building.
• Business Impact: Demonstrated success improving key business metrics (conversion, engagement, retention) through personalization, with the ability to communicate complex technical concepts to executive stakeholders.
• Education: MS/PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or related quantitative field, or equivalent industry experience building production ML systems.

Bonus Points:

• Experience in travel, e-commerce, or marketplace platforms
• Publications or patents in personalization, recommendation systems, or information retrieval
• Experience with multi-objective optimization and contextual bandits
• Knowledge of privacy-preserving personalization techniques

Applications for this role will be accepted through 01/07/2026 or until the role is filled. We encourage you to apply early, as we may begin reviewing applications before the deadline.

The Engine Edge: Perks & Compensation
We believe in rewarding great work with great benefits:

• Compensation: Competitive base pay tied to role and experience, with opportunities for bonuses, commissions, and equity.
• Benefits: Check out our full list at engine.com/culture.
• Environments for Success: Different roles have different needs in terms of the environments that drive success which is why we have a hybrid-hub model. Whether you are in one of our amazing offices or fully remote, we’ll make sure you have what you need to succeed.

Perks and benefits may vary based on employment type, location, and more.

Ready to Build the Future of Work Travel?
Join us on our mission to transform how work travel works—for businesses, for travelers, and for the industry. Apply now and let’s make travel simpler, smarter, and more enjoyable—together.