Machine Learning Manager, Wayfair
Catalog Enrichment
A global online homeware marketplace
Open for applications
A global online homeware marketplace
1001+ employees
Open for applications
1001+ employees
Company mission
To help everyone, anywhere create their feeling of home.
Role
Who you are
- 6+ years of experience (including 2+ years as a lead/manager) developing and deploying ML models in large-scale, real-world settings
- Strong deep learning expertise, particularly in classification, structured prediction, and multi-modal AI (text + vision)
- Hands-on technical leader who can engage deeply in algorithm development, model architecture, and system design while empowering the team
- Experience scaling ML solutions to handle 100M+ products, focusing on cost efficiency, accuracy, and real-time performance
- Proven ability to balance research-driven innovation with practical, production-grade ML deployments
- Track record of mentoring and coaching ML scientists across various experience levels
- Strong business acumen, capable of translating commercial objectives into AI/ML strategies with measurable impact
- Deep understanding of LLMs, generative AI, and fine-tuning techniques, with hands-on experience using models like GPT, Gemini, Claude, or Llama
- Familiarity with ML Ops, cloud infrastructure, and engineering best practices (Airflow, Kubeflow, MLFlow, Kubernetes, Spark, Python, SQL)
Desirable
- Experience working in e-commerce catalog AI systems, retail data structuring, or large-scale product classification
- Background in autonomous AI agents, reinforcement learning, or online learning systems
- Research publications in deep learning, structured prediction, or generative AI
What the job involves
- We’re looking for a strong ML leader to drive the future of AI-powered catalog enrichment
- Your team will develop large-scale machine learning systems that automate metadata extraction, clean up inconsistencies, and evaluate their own performance
- You’ll work at the intersection of LLMs, language-vision models, and scalable deep learning architectures to make product data more accurate, reliable, and completely automated
- If you’re excited about leading high-impact ML teams, building AI systems at a massive scale, and working on real-world generative AI applications beyond chatbots, this is the role for you
- Lead a team of ML scientists driving AI-powered automation for product data structuring, attribute extraction, and metadata validation—ensuring our catalog remains accurate, complete, and scalable
- Hire, develop, and coach top ML talent, fostering expertise in generative AI, multi-modal deep learning, and high-scale ML deployments to push the boundaries of catalog intelligence
- Collaborate with top AI research and industry leaders (e.g., Google, Anthropic, Snorkel AI) to explore cutting-edge techniques in LLMs, data labeling automation, and scalable ML workflows
- Define and execute the AI/ML roadmap for catalog enrichment, balancing cutting-edge research with cost-effective, production-grade solutions
- Leverage and fine-tune LLMs (e.g., OpenAI GPT, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude) to build AI-driven classifiers, product taggers, and quality control mechanisms
- Develop agentic AI workflows for automated schema definition, dataset generation, and LLM-based judgment systems to validate catalog data
- Partner with cross-functional teams across engineering, data science, and product to ensure AI solutions integrate seamlessly into catalog systems
- Build scalable ML pipelines and real-time inference systems to tag and structure incoming product data efficiently
- Optimize cost, efficiency, and scalability of AI models, leveraging parameter-efficient fine-tuning (LoRA, QLoRA), knowledge distillation, and hybrid ML approaches
- Stay ahead of industry trends in catalog intelligence, generative AI, and autonomous ML agents, integrating SOTA research into practical, high-impact solutions
Our take
Wayfair emerged in the early era of eCommerce with a mission to revolutionize online shopping, offering customers a convenient platform to purchase goods. Today, it stands as one of the foremost global players in the online furniture delivery industry, boasting an impressive inventory of over 33 million products.
Renowned for its extensive product range and comprehensive service offerings, Wayfair distinguishes itself by providing an end-to-end customer experience, from browsing to doorstep delivery. Despite its prominence, the company faces profitability challenges attributed largely to expansion expenses. Nonetheless, its solid presence in the competitive online homeware sector solidifies its position as a key contender.
With ambitious global expansion plans, Wayfair remains committed to maintaining its leadership in the industry. As it aspires to become the ultimate destination for all home needs, its more recent ventures into physical retail represent significant strides toward this overarching goal.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-14% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Company values
- Relentless Customer Focus: Delivering an exceptional customer experience drives everything we do. We invest in understanding our customers and partners. We are all in customer service
- Deliver Rsults With Agility: We prioritize work that drives long-term value. We execute with urgency, learn from failure, and nimbly pivot. The outcomes of our efforts are impactful, measurable results
- Use Good Judgement: We are bold and confident, never reckless. We make reasoned, calculated decisions based on data, critical thinking, and pattern recognition
- Build the Best Team: We lead by setting the bar high, articulating clear goals, and diving deep. We hire, develop, and leverage only the best. Our leaders continually reevaluate and strengthen their teams and do not shy away from hard decisions. We expect and demonstrate excellence
- Collaborate Effectively: We invest in cross-functional global partnerships that maximize impact and minimize duplication. We prize collaboration in all interactions – with our teammates, stakeholders, and suppliers. We disagree, align, and commit. Effectiveness and efficiency in collaboration are required.
- Respect Others: We earn and show respect, treating our teammates and partners with empathy and inclusion. We presume good intent while prioritizing impact. We balance confidence and candor with humility and kindness.
- Be an Owner: We are Wayfair first. We act on what’s best for the company, ahead of team or individual goals. We spend every dollar as if it is our own. We take pride in Wayfair’s success while planning the next win. We always think long-term
- Innovate & Improve: We are not limited by precedent. We boldly challenge the norm. We continually identify opportunities to innovate, improve, and simplify. We value incremental improvements, but we also look for game-changing breakthroughs.
- Adapt & Grow: We value adaptability and self-reflection. We find opportunity in every change, experience, and mistake. We are committed to continuous self-improvement.
Company HQ
Prudential / St. Botolph, Boston, MA
Articles
Leadership
Niraj Shah
(Co-Founder & CEO)Studied Engineering at Cornell University before co-founding Spinners, a Boston-based IT services company. Previously acted as Entrepreneur in Residence for Greylock and has served as CEO of Wayfair since co-founding the company in 2002.
Steven Conine
(Co-Founder)Co-founded Spinners before working for Operations at iXL. Conine also co-founded Pillar VC in 2016.
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