Senior Manager - Applied Research

Location: Bengaluru, India

Category: Engineering

About the Role

As Senior Manager - Applied Research at eBay's Bengaluru office, you will lead a high-impact team pioneering next-generation recommender systems that power personalized shopping experiences for millions of buyers across 190+ markets. Leveraging cutting-edge ML, NLP, LLMs, and AI techniques, you'll drive the personalization strategy for eBay's homepage and native apps, transforming how users navigate vast e-commerce inventories of unstructured multimodal data. Collaborate with global product, design, and analytics leaders to deploy production-scale AI models that boost marketplace growth, GMB, and advertising revenue through organic and sponsored recommendations.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and manage a team of applied researchers and engineers specializing in NLP, LLMs/AI, recommender systems, and ML production engineering
• Drive personalization strategy for eBay recommendations and influence homepage look and feel
• Influence future interactions with recommender systems and evolution of the technology
• Work with unique large datasets of unstructured multimodal data from eBay's vast inventory and millions of users
• Develop and deploy state-of-the-art AI models for e-commerce recommendations
• Deploy big data technology and large-scale data pipelines for real-time recommendations
• Drive marketplace GMB and advertising revenue via organic and sponsored recommendations
• Collaborate with global Recommendations organization, product managers, design, and analytics leaders
• Hire top talent and get AI systems into production at eBay scale
• Build cutting-edge recommender systems using latest ML, NLP, LLM, and AI techniques

Required Qualifications

• MS/PhD in Computer Science or related area with 8 years of relevant work experience (or BS/BA with 10 years) in Engineering / Machine Learning / AI
• Experience leading a nimble engineering/research team, preferably in a ML/AI technology environment
• Experience with using cloud services, big data pipelines and databases
• Experience in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and industrial recommender systems
• Experience in production engineering practices and software development in an OO language (Scala, Java, etc.)
• Experience in high volume traffic webapp development in an industrial e-commerce setting

Preferred Qualifications

• Previous publications experience with academic papers, patents/IP, or technical blogs
• Deep expertise in large language models (LLMs) and multimodal AI techniques
• Proven track record in deploying recommender systems at e-commerce scale
• Experience driving marketplace revenue through personalized recommendations
• Familiarity with MLOps in high-traffic environments like eBay's platform

Required Skills

• Leadership in ML/AI research teams
• Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AI
• Recommender systems design and deployment
• Machine Learning production engineering (MLOps)
• Big data pipelines and cloud services (e.g., Google Cloud)
• Software development in Scala, Java or similar OO languages
• High-volume traffic webapp development
• Personalization strategies for e-commerce
• Multimodal data processing for inventory recommendations
• Cross-functional collaboration with product and design
• Talent hiring and team management
• Real-time recommendation systems at scale
• Driving revenue through AI-powered features
• Technical innovation and publication

Benefits & Perks

• Comprehensive health insurance and wellness programs
• Equity grants and employee stock purchase plans
• Flexible work arrangements including hybrid options in Bengaluru
• Professional development and learning stipends
• Generous parental leave and family support benefits
• Retirement savings plans with company matching
• Mental health resources and employee assistance programs
• Volunteer time off and community impact programs
• Global mobility opportunities within eBay's distributed teams

eBay Inc. is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion.