Summary:
The Opportunity

Hyatt Hotels Corporation seeks an enthusiastic Lead Data Scientist to join our AIML Team. In this role, you will be collaborating closely with our partners across ML Engineering, Data Engineering, Platform, Product, and Finance teams. You'll be instrumental in continuing to make Hyatt a leading AIML powered hospitality company and be a part of the team that is passionate about our purpose, committed to nurturing curiosity and new skills, and building connections across the organization with colleagues, customers, and guests.

The Role

As a Lead Data Scientist working on Search, Personalization and Agents, you will own the design, development, evaluation, and optimization of AI and Machine Learning solutions that support Hyatt's guest, colleague, and operational experiences.

This is an individual contributor role with no direct people-management responsibilities. However, you will be expected to provide technical leadership, mentor peers, influence architecture and product direction, and raise the overall technical bar for applied AI at Hyatt.

Generative AI and Applied Machine Learning
• Design, prototype, and productionize Generative AI solutions in NL Search, Information Retrieval and Recommender Systems.
• Build and evaluate LLM-powered applications, including retrieval-augmented generation, prompt engineering, fine-tuning, embeddings, semantic search, and agentic or workflow-based AI systems.
• Develop robust model evaluation frameworks, including offline metrics, human evaluation, guardrail testing, bias and safety checks, and business-impact measurement.
• Identify opportunities to apply AI to improve guest experiences, colleague productivity, operational efficiency, and commercial outcomes.
• Translate ambiguous business problems into clear data science problem statements, solution designs, success metrics, and implementation plans.

Technical Leadership as an Individual Contributor
• Serve as a hands-on technical lead for high-impact AI and machine learning initiatives.
• Lead solution design, modeling decisions, experimentation strategy, and technical tradeoff discussions.
• Partner with ML engineering and data engineering teams to deploy scalable real-time inference pipelines and batch processing workflows.
• Influence technical roadmaps and help sequence data science initiatives based on business value, feasibility, risk, and team capacity.
• Mentor data scientists and ML practitioners through design reviews, code reviews, modeling best practices, and knowledge sharing.

Production AI, MLOps, and Cloud Delivery
• Collaborate with ML engineering to productionize models and Gen AI services using AWS-native tools and modern MLOps practices.
• Contribute to scalable ML system design, including data pipelines, feature workflows, model serving, observability, monitoring, and lifecycle management.
• Apply strong software engineering practices, including version control, CI/CD, testing, reproducibility, containerization, and documentation.
• Support deployment patterns for both batch and low-latency inference use cases.
• Partner with security, governance, architecture, and legal/privacy stakeholders to ensure AI systems are reliable, secure, compliant, and responsibly deployed.

Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Work closely with product owners, data scientists, ML engineers, data engineers, architects, and business stakeholders to deliver end-to-end algorithmic products.
• Communicate model behavior, limitations, assumptions, risks, and business impact clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Define measurable success criteria and help evaluate whether AI solutions are delivering intended outcomes.
• Champion responsible AI, inclusive design, and practical experimentation across projects.

Qualifications:
Experience Required:
• Master's degree in computer science, Software Engineering, or related field. Ph.D preferred.
• 6+ years of experience in machine learning roles focused on areas such as NLP/NLU, reinforcement learning or LLM applications, including 3+ years of people management experience in a tech leadership role.
• Experience in fine-tuning and deploying LLMs or other Generative AI solutions to production.
• Expertise in AWS cloud services (e.g., SageMaker, ECS/EKS, Step Functions, Lambda, Glue).
• Strong programming skills in Python, with experience in SQL, PySpark, and containerization (e.g., Docker).
• Proven experience designing scalable data pipelines and ML systems for both real-time and batch inference.
• Deep understanding of responsible AI practices, CI-CD pipelines, Agile development practices, and model lifecycle management.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with a strong bias for action and collaboration.
• Familiarity with ML observability and governance tools.

The position responsibilities outlined above are in no way to be construed as all-encompassing. Other duties, responsibilities, and qualifications may be required and/or assigned as necessary.

We welcome you:

Research shows that individuals tend to apply to jobs only if they meet all the listed job qualifications. Unsure if you check every box, but feeling inspired to enhance your career? Apply. We'd love to consider your unique experiences and how you could make Hyatt even better.

We value our relationships with recruitment partners and require that agencies contact us first before submitting any candidates. Hyatt will not be responsible for any fees and obligations associated with unsolicited submissions unless a formal agreement is in place.

Thesalaryrangeforthispositionis$160,000 -170,000.Thispositionisalsoeligibletoearnanannualbonus.

Thefinalpayrate/salaryofferedtothesuccessfulcandidatewilldependonexperience,skilllevelandotherqualificationsfortherole,aswellasthelocationoftheperformanceofwork.Payforthesuccessfulcandidatewillmeetlocalrequirements,includingthelocalminimumwagerate.