What are the responsibilities and job description for the Staff Applied Scientist - Search & Personalization position at Wayfair?
About The Team
The Search Machine Learning (ML) team at Wayfair is at the forefront of designing and implementing algorithms that define our global search experience. Using cutting-edge machine learning approaches—including advanced NLP, semantic search, and multi-modal technologies—we aim to deliver fast, accurate, and personalized search results for over 22 million active customers. Our mission is to make the search experience intuitive and efficient, helping customers discover exactly what they need in a vast and diverse product catalog.
Responsibilities
Wayfair is fully committed to providing equal opportunities for all individuals, including individuals with disabilities. As part of this commitment, Wayfair will make reasonable accommodations to the known physical or mental limitations of qualified individuals with disabilities, unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on business operations. If you require a reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, please let us know by completing our Accomodations for Applicants form.
Need Technical Assistance?
For more information about applying for a career at wayfair, visit our FAQ page here.
About Wayfair Inc.
Wayfair is one of the world’s largest online destinations for the home. Whether you work in our global headquarters in Boston, or in our warehouses or offices throughout the world, we’re reinventing the way people shop for their homes. Through our commitment to industry-leading technology and creative problem-solving, we are confident that Wayfair will be home to the most rewarding work of your career. If you’re looking for rapid growth, constant learning, and dynamic challenges, then you’ll find that amazing career opportunities are knocking.
No matter who you are, Wayfair is a place you can call home. We’re a community of innovators, risk-takers, and trailblazers who celebrate our differences, and know that our unique perspectives make us stronger, smarter, and well-positioned for success. We value and rely on the collective voices of our employees, customers, community, and suppliers to help guide us as we build a better Wayfair – and world – for all. Every voice, every perspective matters. That’s why we’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship status, marital status, disability, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected characteristic.
Your personal data is processed in accordance with our Candidate Privacy Notice (https://www.wayfair.com/careers/privacy). If you have any questions or wish to exercise your rights under applicable privacy and data protection laws, please contact us at dataprotectionofficer@wayfair.com.
The Search Machine Learning (ML) team at Wayfair is at the forefront of designing and implementing algorithms that define our global search experience. Using cutting-edge machine learning approaches—including advanced NLP, semantic search, and multi-modal technologies—we aim to deliver fast, accurate, and personalized search results for over 22 million active customers. Our mission is to make the search experience intuitive and efficient, helping customers discover exactly what they need in a vast and diverse product catalog.
Responsibilities
- Enhance search relevance: Design and implement scalable ML models that improve the relevance, ranking, and personalization of search results across Wayfair’s platforms.
- Optimize retrieval systems: Develop and fine-tune search retrieval techniques to improve performance and scalability in handling web-scale customer queries.
- Advance query understanding: Apply advanced NLP techniques to enhance query parsing, intent recognition, and semantic understanding for diverse user inputs.
- Innovate search experiences: Explore and implement graph-based learning, semantic embeddings, and multi-modal techniques to power next-generation search systems.
- Collaborate cross-functionally: Work closely with product managers, engineers, and data scientists to ensure alignment of search system improvements with business goals.
- Solve unique search challenges: Address search-specific issues such as cold-start problems, long-tail queries, and real-time search performance optimization.
- Contribute to the community: Share expertise through internal forums, author technical documentation, and represent Wayfair at leading ML conferences such as NeurIPS.
- Expertise in search technologies, including retrieval, ranking systems, and query understanding.
- Strong proficiency in Python and/or Java for building and deploying ML-driven search systems.
- Deep understanding of NLP techniques, semantic search, and embedding-based retrieval.
- Proven ability to execute and deliver large-scale search-related ML projects, including roadmap development and implementation.
- Strong knowledge of statistical modeling, experimental design, hypothesis testing, or optimization.
- Experience with cloud-native technologies; familiarity with GCP and Vertex AI is a plus.
- Advanced problem-solving skills focused on tackling search-specific challenges like personalization, scalability, and accuracy.
- Familiarity with e-commerce search systems or similar large-scale applications.
- Experience in applying graph-based learning and multi-modal techniques to search.
- Practical expertise in designing scalable, reusable, and cloud-based search infrastructures.
- Contributions to internal forums or external ML and search-focused communities.
Wayfair is fully committed to providing equal opportunities for all individuals, including individuals with disabilities. As part of this commitment, Wayfair will make reasonable accommodations to the known physical or mental limitations of qualified individuals with disabilities, unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on business operations. If you require a reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, please let us know by completing our Accomodations for Applicants form.
Need Technical Assistance?
For more information about applying for a career at wayfair, visit our FAQ page here.
About Wayfair Inc.
Wayfair is one of the world’s largest online destinations for the home. Whether you work in our global headquarters in Boston, or in our warehouses or offices throughout the world, we’re reinventing the way people shop for their homes. Through our commitment to industry-leading technology and creative problem-solving, we are confident that Wayfair will be home to the most rewarding work of your career. If you’re looking for rapid growth, constant learning, and dynamic challenges, then you’ll find that amazing career opportunities are knocking.
No matter who you are, Wayfair is a place you can call home. We’re a community of innovators, risk-takers, and trailblazers who celebrate our differences, and know that our unique perspectives make us stronger, smarter, and well-positioned for success. We value and rely on the collective voices of our employees, customers, community, and suppliers to help guide us as we build a better Wayfair – and world – for all. Every voice, every perspective matters. That’s why we’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship status, marital status, disability, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected characteristic.
Your personal data is processed in accordance with our Candidate Privacy Notice (https://www.wayfair.com/careers/privacy). If you have any questions or wish to exercise your rights under applicable privacy and data protection laws, please contact us at dataprotectionofficer@wayfair.com.