Senior Software Engineer - Backend/Machine Learning (Remote)

Position Purpose:

The Discovery Intent and Guidance (DIG) team is a specialized engineering and product unit within the broader Discovery and Recommendations Platform. We are focused on building the core architectural and machine learning capabilities that power the digital product recommendation journey across all customer touchpoints. Our ultimate goal is to create a seamless, cohesive, and highly explainable product discovery experience for our users. We are seeking a highly skilled and highly motivated Senior Software Engineer to join the DIG team. In this role, you will play a critical part in designing, building, and modernizing the systems that drive our recommendation engines. You will work at the intersection of core backend engineering, data processing, and cutting-edge artificial intelligence, helping to integrate large language models (LLMs) and agentic workflows into our product discovery ecosystem. As a senior member of the team, you will also be expected to lead system design initiatives, mentor junior engineers, and drive best practices in scalable architecture.

Key Responsibilities:

• 50% Delivery and Execution - Develops, tests, deploys, and maintains software, with a clear understanding of the value the software is to provide; Takes on new opportunities and tough challenges with a sense of urgency, high energy and enthusiasm; Consistently achieves results, even under tough circumstances; Develops test suites (functional, destructive, etc) to enable success, rapid deployment of code to production; Takes a broad view when approaching issues; using a global lens
• 20% Learns and Grows - Learns through successful and failed experiment when tackling new problems; Actively seeks ways to grow and be challenged using both formal and informal development channels
• 20% Plans and Aligns - Collaborates with other team members in agile processes; Creates new and better ways for the organization to be successful; Works the Product Team to ensure user stories are valuable, developer ready, easy to understand and testable; Delivers multi-mode communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences; Adapts approach and demeanor in real time to match the shifting demands of different situations; Relates openly and comfortably with diverse groups of people
• 10% Supports and Enables - Helps grow junior engineers by providing guidance on modern software development frameworks, and leading technical discussions

Direct Manager/Direct Reports:

• This position typically reports to Software Engineer Manager or Sr. Manager
• This position has 0 Direct Reports

Travel Requirements:

• No travel required.

Physical Requirements:

• Most of the time is spent sitting in a comfortable position and there is frequent opportunity to move about. On rare occasions there may be a need to move or lift light articles.

Working Conditions:

• Located in a comfortable indoor area. Any unpleasant conditions would be infrequent and not objectionable.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Must be eighteen years of age or older.
• Must be legally permitted to work in the United States.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 3-5 years of experience
• Languages — Strong in at least one of: Java, Scala, Python
• Microservices — REST APIs, gRPC, event-driven architecture (Pub/Sub, Cloud Tasks)
• System Design — Distributed systems, scalability, fault tolerance, API gateway patterns
• GCP Core — Compute Engine, GKE, Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, IAM
• BigQuery — Advanced SQL, partitioning, clustering, cost optimization
• Pipelines — Dataflow (Apache Beam), Dataproc (Spark), batch and streaming
• Storage — Bigtable, Cloud Storage, Firestore
• Orchestration — Cloud Composer (Airflow), Workflows
• Vertex AI — Model training, hyperparameter tuning, pipelines, model registry
• Frameworks — TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn MLOps — Model serving (Vertex AI Endpoints), monitoring, retraining pipelines Feature Store — Vertex AI Feature Store Search ML — Ranking, relevance tuning, embeddings (nice to have) AI & LLM Gemini — Gemini API, Gemini Pro, multimodal usage Vertex AI
• Generative AI — Model Garden, grounding, tuning RAG — Retrieval Augmented Generation, Vector Search (Vertex AI Vector Search) Agentic AI — Multi-agent frameworks, tool use, autonomous workflows

Minimum Education:

• The knowledge, skills and abilities typically acquired through the completion of a bachelor's degree program or equivalent degree in a field of study related to the job.

Preferred Education:

• No additional education

Minimum Years of Work Experience:

• 3

Preferred Years of Work Experience:

• No additional years of experience

Minimum Leadership Experience:

• None

Preferred Leadership Experience:

• None

Certifications:

• None

Competencies:

• Global Perspective
• Manages Ambiguity
• Nimble Learning
• Self-Development
• Collaborates
• Cultivates Innovation
• Situational Adaptability
• Communicates Effectively
• Drives Results
• Interpersonal Savvy