Manager of Applied Machine Learning

As a Manager of Applied Machine Learning, you will lead a high-impact team of scientists and engineers building state-of-the-art machine learning systems to solve critical problems that affect millions of eBay users. You will set the direction, nurture talent, and ensure excellence in execution and scientific rigor, while collaborating across product, engineering, and operations to deliver measurable customer and business impact.

Responsibilities:

• Drive Strategy and Vision: Partner with senior leadership, product management, and other stakeholders to define and execute the machine learning roadmap aligned with business goals.
• Team Leadership: Lead, mentor, and grow a team of ML scientists and engineers. Create an environment that encourages innovation, high performance, and career development.
• Technical Oversight: Guide and review the development of machine learning models and data pipelines, ensuring scalability, scientific validity, and production readiness.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate with Product and Analytics teams to scope projects, prioritize initiatives, and ensure seamless data and model integration.
• Operational Excellence: Define project goals, success metrics, and delivery timelines. Ensure effective resource allocation and continuous improvement in team processes.
• Foster Scientific Rigor: Uphold high standards of experimentation, measurement, and peer review. Promote the use of reproducible research and robust evaluation practices.
• Data Strategy: Partner with the operations and data teams to ensure access to high-quality labeled data, and proactively shape data acquisition strategies where needed.
• Talent Development: Provide coaching and technical guidance to team members. Conduct performance reviews, identify skill gaps, and invest in team capability building.
• Hiring: Attract, interview, and hire top talent to grow the team and enhance its diversity of thought and background.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related field with 6+ years of relevant industry experience, including 3+ years in people management.
• Proven experience leading machine learning teams in an applied industrial setting.
• Deep understanding of modern ML approaches, including classification, regression, NLP, clustering, deep learning, and/or reinforcement learning.
• Strong programming background in Python, Java, or similar, with exposure to production-grade ML systems.
• Proficiency with big data processing frameworks such as Hadoop, Spark, and SQL.
• Excellent communication, storytelling, and stakeholder management skills.
• Demonstrated ability to translate business needs into scientific problems and to prioritize for impact.

Additional Qualifications:

• Master's or Ph. D. in a relevant field (Computer Science, ML, Stats, etc. )
• Track record of impactful publications and/or patents in machine learning or related areas.
• Contributions to open-source ML tools or frameworks.
• Experience with modern large language models, graph-based ML, or knowledge graph construction.
• Strong presence in scientific communities through talks, panels, or organizing roles.

Skills

ML, SQL, hadoop, java, machine learning, python, spark