About Us:

HomeAway, based in Austin, Texas, is the world leader in vacation rentals with more than 2 million unique places to stay in 190 countries, and is a part of the Expedia, Inc. family of brands. 

HomeAway offers an extensive selection of vacation rental homes that provide travelers with memorable experiences and benefits, especially more room to relax, for less than the cost of traditional hotel accommodations. The company also makes it easy for vacation rental owners and property managers to advertise their properties and manage bookings online.

The Opportunity:

We are looking for excellent Data Scientists to join our growing 20+ strong team. This position focuses on yield optimization and dynamic pricing, so it is a good fit for those with backgrounds such as operations research, economics and applied mathematics. This role will work closely with our marketplace design team to help boost efficiency and profitability on our massive e-commerce marketplace. The statistical learning algorithms you develop will affect billions of dollars of transactions every year. 

Challenges to work on:

• Understand supply and demand based on rich features sets that very across space and time
• Modifying ranking algorithms to support a healthy marketplace with dynamic commissions
• Model demand curves in a high-dimensional space using modern techniques such as deep learning
• Develop mechanisms to dynamically trigger supply 
• Optimal pricing 
• Spacial modeling of supply value

Responsibilities:

• Work on larger programs/initiatives encompassing several projects that have a company-wide impact
• Apply best-in-class machine learning techniques to solve the business problem at hand
• Produce novel insights with machine learning to inform company strategy
• Assist others with data discovery and data preparation phase
• Help build the core feedback loops and incentive structures in our marketplace
• Work end-to-end on "studio projects" that you conceive, develop and land as a winner in the company
• Attend conferences and read papers to stay on top of advancements in the field

Qualifications:

• Experience with programming languages such as R, Python, or Scala
• Experience in processing and analyzing large scale data volumes, semi-structured and unstructured data and near real-time throughput
• Experience applying the right ML model to solve business problems
• Ability and passion to learn new techniques to stay on the cutting edge
• Experience working in Hadoop ecosystem
• Strong database knowledge and expertise in SQL
• Experience using visualization tools such as Tableau and Datameer
• Good storytelling and presentation skills i.e be able to present business side of the story that data presents to c-team and business leaders
• Masters or Ph.D in Statistics, Math, Computer Science or other quantitative field

Benefits & Perks:

• Competitive health and insurance benefits
• Competitive salary
• Annual target bonus or commission
• Paid vacation and sick time
• Vacation rental on a yearly basis (taxable benefit)
• Parental Leave (up to 20 weeks based on eligibility)
• Employee Stock Purchase Program
• Free snacks and beverages, including breakfast on Fridays
• Frequent company update talks with our leadership team
• Free listing on HomeAway.com
• Electronic, adjustable stand-up desk
• Discounted Metro & Rail pass
• Casual dress

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.