OpenTable

Applied Machine Learning Scientist II

OpenTable$170K — $190K *
Hospitality & Recreation
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or related field with 0-3 years of relevant experience.
  • Proficiency in Python and machine learning frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow.
  • Hands-on experience with training and tuning machine learning models, including Transformers.
  • Strong foundation in software engineering principles and familiarity with large-scale data systems.
  • Ability to translate business goals into machine learning metrics and address production issues.

Responsibilities

  • Prototype and evaluate machine learning systems for restaurant content understanding and recommendations.
  • Build and monitor scalable data and machine learning pipelines for quality assurance.
  • Design evaluation frameworks and experiments to enhance model performance.
  • Apply large language models and multimodal techniques for content extraction and classification.
  • Develop reusable machine learning tools and maintain high code quality standards.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to create scalable machine learning solutions.

Benefits

  • Generous paid vacation, including time off for your birthday.
  • Work from (almost) anywhere for up to 20 days per year.
  • Company-paid therapy sessions and Headspace subscription for mental health support.
  • Paid parental leave and volunteer time.
  • Development opportunities including access to e-learning resources and leadership development.
  • 20 days of paid time off, along with health and dental insurance.
Full Job Description
This hybrid role requires working in the office two days per week.

Responsibilities
  • Prototype, evaluate, and productionize machine learning systems to enhance restaurant content understanding, retrieval, matching, ranking, and recommendation.
  • Build and monitor scalable data and machine learning pipelines, ensuring strong data quality and reproducibility.
  • Design evaluation frameworks and experiments to define success metrics and continuously improve model quality, relevance, and product impact.
  • Apply large language models (LLMs) and multimodal approaches to content tasks like extraction and classification while optimizing for performance, latency, and cost.
  • Develop reusable machine learning tooling and maintain rigorous standards for code quality, deployment, and documentation.
  • Collaborate cross-functionally with engineering, product, and content teams to translate ambiguous business needs into practical, scalable machine learning solutions.

Minimum Qualifications
  • Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related technical field, with 0-3 years of relevant academic or professional experience.
  • Proficiency in Python and foundational machine learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, XGBoost).
  • Hands-on experience training, tuning, evaluating, and debugging classical machine learning and deep learning models, including Transformers.
  • Strong foundation in software engineering principles, algorithms, and data structures, with familiarity in large-scale data systems.
  • Demonstrated ability to translate business goals into machine learning metrics and address common production issues like data drift and overfitting.

Preferred Qualifications
  • Experience applying machine learning to text, image, or multimodal content for retrieval, matching, ranking, or recommendation.
  • Familiarity with large language model (LLM) workflows for text and image processing tasks.
  • Exposure to search systems, information retrieval, embeddings, or learning-to-rank methodologies.
  • Experience with human-in-the-loop machine learning systems supporting operational or editorial workflows.
  • Demonstrated applied curiosity through substantial technical projects, research, open-source contributions, or internships.

Benefits and Perks
  • Generous paid vacation + time off for your birthday
  • Work from (almost) anywhere for up to 20 days per year
  • Focus on mental health and well-being:
    • Company-paid therapy sessions through SpringHealth
    • Company-paid subscription to Headspace
    • Annual company-wide week off a year - the whole team fully recharges (and returns without a pile-up of work!)
  • Paid parental leave
  • Paid volunteer time
  • Focus on your career growth:
    • Development Dollars
    • Leadership development
    • Access to thousands of on-demand e-learnings
  • Travel Discounts
  • Employee Resource Groups
  • 20 days of paid time off
  • Private health and dental insurance
  • Life and Disability insurance

The best connections happen face-to-face, whether you're sitting down to dinner or having coffee with a coworker. That's why OpenTable has adopted a hybrid workplace model. This role aligns with that approach, with an expectation of coming into the office two days a week-giving employees the best of both worlds: in-person collaboration and flexibility.

The expected range of compensation for this position based in Toronto, Canada, including commission and/or bonuses is $170,000 - $190,000 CAD. There are a variety of factors that go into determining a compensation range, including but not limited to external market benchmark data, geographic location, and years of experience sought/required.

We offer a competitive base salary and benefits including: health benefits; flexible spending account; retirement benefits; life insurance; paid time off (including PTO, paid sick leave, medical leave, bereavement leave, floating holidays and paid holidays); and parental leave benefits. This role is eligible to be considered for an annual bonus and equity grant.

Work Environment & Flexibility

At OpenTable, we pride ourselves on fostering a global and dynamic work environment. As a team member with us, you will benefit from a schedule tailored to accommodate a global workforce operating across multiple time zones. While the majority of your responsibilities may align with conventional business hours, there will be instances where you are expected to manage communications - via calls, Slack messages, or emails - outside of regular working hours to effectively collaborate with international colleagues, respond to restaurant partners, and/or address urgent matters. OpenTable will always abide by and consider local laws and regulations.

Inclusion

We're committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels they belong and can thrive. We know the best ideas come when we bring different voices to the table, so we're building a team as dynamic as the diners and restaurants we serve-and fostering a culture where everyone feels welcome to be themselves.

If you need accommodations during the application or interview process, or on the job, we're here to support you. Please reach out to your recruiter to request any accommodations.

#LI-LR1

#LI-Hybrid

About OpenTable

OpenTable is an online restaurant-reservation service company. It provides online reservations at about 54,000 restaurants around the world seating some 30 million diners monthly. The company was founded in San Francisco, California in 1998. Reservations are free to end users; the company charges restaurants monthly and per-reservation fees for their use of the system. In addition to online reservations, OpenTable offers restaurant management software for table management, guest management, and reservation management. OpenTable went public on the NASDAQ in 2009, and in 2014 it was acquired by Priceline Group for $2.6 billion.
Learn more about OpenTable
Size
5,000 employees
Industry
Founded
1998

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