Company Overview:
At Tripla, we're building the core technology that powers the modern hospitality industry. Following a successful IPO and the acquisition of three companies, we're now focused on integrating our platforms and accelerating our global expansion.
Our goal is straightforward: to help hotels maximize their profitability, improve the guest experience, and streamline their operations. We accomplish this with a comprehensive suite of AI-powered products, including booking engines, chatbots, and marketing and payment solutions, currently used by over 8,000 customers across the Asia-Pacific region.
We’ve already achieved product-market fit and built a strong customer base. Now, we are making AI our core strategic differentiator. This is your opportunity to shape the AI strategy of a high-growth public company from the ground up, with direct access to executive leadership and a clear impact on thousands of hotels and millions of travelers.
Job Summary:
We are looking for a hands-on and visionary Director of AI & Data to build and lead our data and machine learning initiatives. This is a "player-coach" role for a leader who can define a compelling AI strategy while possessing the technical depth to guide its execution. You will lead a multidisciplinary team of Machine Learning Engineers, Data Engineers, and Data Analysts to build customer-facing AI products while also empowering our internal product teams with critical data insights.
In the beginning, you'll be hands-on, establishing best practices and shipping initial projects. As you grow the team's capabilities, your focus will shift more towards strategy and mentorship. Reporting to the CTO/CPO and working in close partnership with the VP of Product, you will have full ownership of our AI roadmap, architecture, and delivery.
Key Responsibilities:
- Define and drive Tripla's AI roadmap in collaboration with executive leadership, identifying new products and features that leverage our unique data assets to create customer value.
- Take full ownership of the performance and improvement of our existing AI systems, including our chatbot, recommendation, and pricing models.
- Build, hire, and lead a high-performing team of Machine Learning Engineers, Data Engineers, and Data Analysts, fostering a culture of technical excellence and innovation.
- Establish and enforce engineering best practices for the team, emphasizing reproducible, production-ready code through version control, code reviews, and CI/CD.
- Lead the design and construction of Tripla's data lakehouse, creating scalable and reusable data models that serve as the foundation for both analytics and machine learning.
- Partner with Product Managers to conduct product experiments, analyze key performance metrics, and use data-driven insights to guide the product development lifecycle.
- Develop robust MLOps infrastructure for automated model training, deployment, and monitoring to ensure operational reliability and enable continuous improvement.
- Act as a key bridge between technical and business teams, translating business needs into clear technical requirements and communicating technical complexities to stakeholders.
Why Join Us?
- Direct impact on strategy, product, and business outcomes in a company poised for global growth.
- Ownership of the AI roadmap with the autonomy to shape technical direction, tools, and team structure.
- Dynamic, agile, and collaborative environment with a clear path for growth.
- Be a core member of the leadership team transforming an industry with AI.
Location & Work Style:
- Flexible work environment. Tokyo office available for hybrid work.
- Occasional travel may be required.
Required Skills and Qualifications:
- 8+ years of experience in ML engineering, data science, or AI product leadership, including 3+ years in a managerial or strategic role.
- Proven experience leading AI projects from concept to production, with a track record of being hands-on, especially in the early stages of team and product development.
- Practical experience building and deploying production systems in at least one of the following areas: NLP (e.g., chatbots, Q&A systems), recommendation systems, or predictive modeling (e.g., pricing).
- A proactive, entrepreneurial mindset with a strong sense of ownership and urgency. You exercise sound judgment in ambiguous situations and are interested in how your work contributes to the company's overall business strategy.
- Demonstrated success in hiring, growing, and mentoring multidisciplinary teams of Machine Learning Engineers, Data Engineers, and Data Analysts, with the ability to define clear project deliverables and influence technical decisions.
- You possess excellent written and verbal communication skills in English and can clearly articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences. You are adept at giving and receiving constructive feedback.
- Solid understanding of modern data architecture, including data lakes/lakehouses, and experience with relevant tools (e.g., Spark, BigQuery, Snowflake, dbt).
- Pragmatic decision-making skills, with demonstrated experience evaluating when to build custom solutions versus leveraging open-source or commercial tools.
- Proficiency with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or PyTorch and experience with MLOps tools and cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure).
Preferred Qualifications:
- Prior experience in hospitality or travel tech.
- Japanese language proficiency is a plus.
Commuting allowance: paid in accordance with company regulations
Full social insurance (employment, workers' compensation, health, and pension)
Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays
Annual paid vacation: 10 days at the time of employment
Year-end and New Year vacations: 6 days from December 29 to January 3
tripla Co., Ltd. Human Resources
[email protected]
