Senior Software Engineer II, Retrieval Systems

Company Description

Etsy is the global marketplace for unique and creative goods. We build, power, and evolve the tools and technologies that connect millions of entrepreneurs with millions of buyers around the world. As an Etsy Inc. employee, whether a team member of Etsy, Reverb, or Depop, you will tackle unique, meaningful, and large-scale problems alongside passionate coworkers, all the while making a rewarding impact and Keeping Commerce Human.

Job Description

What's the role?

Etsy is hiring a Senior Software Engineer II to join the Retrieval Systems team to work on information retrieval systems that power Search, Ads and Recommendation for Etsy.

As a Senior Engineer II, you will work on the development of the retrieval platform to power next gen information retrieval at Etsy and ensure the scalability and performance of our retrieval systems. Do you find joy in building complex distributed systems and optimizing them for high availability and low latency? Do you have passion for systems engineering and enjoy coding in low-level programming languages like Rust, C, C++ etc? Do you enjoy working with an effective and high functioning team that’s passionate about helping buyers on Etsy find the product that’s right for them? If so, this could be the perfect match.

This is a full-time position reporting to the Engineering Manager, Retrieval Systems, and the base salary range will be $184,000 to $205,000 per year. In addition to salary, you will also be eligible for an equity package, an annual performance bonus, and our competitive benefits that support you and your family as part of your total rewards package at Etsy. For this role, we are considering candidates based in the United States who are either remote, flex, or office-based. Etsy offers different work modes to meet the variety of needs and preferences of our team. Learn more about our Flex and Office-based work modes and workplace safety policies here.

What's this team like at Etsy?

The Retrieval Systems team works on Etsy’s platform for information retrieval, powering the foundational layers of Search, Ads and Recommendations for our marketplace. We are evolving an inverted index based system for retrieval written in Rust that provides filtering, approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search and lexical retrieval capabilities. We work closely with product teams and platform site reliability engineers to deliver a robust and scalable retrieval engine that enables our millions of buyers to find the perfect handmade or vintage product among hundreds of millions of listings. Our team values are empathy, kindness, accountability, and autonomy, and we strive to foster an environment where individuals are supported, respected, and empowered to take ownership and collaborate effectively.

What does the day-to-day look like?

• Hands-on coding and development of critical components and features of retrieval systems
• Participate in code and design reviews and maintain high standards of code quality.
• Partner with platform site reliability engineers to optimize the performance of our retrieval systems
• Collaborate with product engineering teams to integrate our retrieval services into their workflows and run A/B experiments.
• Of course, this is just a sample of the kinds of work this role will require! You should assume that your role will encompass other tasks, too, and that your job duties and responsibilities may change from time to time at Etsy's discretion, or otherwise applicable with local law.

Qualifications

Qualities that will help you thrive in this role are:

• You are a caring teammate who enjoys helping others, and you care about the impact of your work.
• Your growth mindset means you love feedback and find joy in continuous learning and self-improvement.
• You have a track record of writing high quality production code, demonstrating strong software engineering and coding skills.
• You have experience working on large scale distributed systems
• You have experience with low level programming languages like Rust, C, C++ etc
• You have strong communication and collaboration skills and are comfortable working in a remote team
• Background and hands-on experience with Cloud technologies (Google Cloud or AWS) is a plus
• Experience with information retrieval technologies like inverted indexes, ANN (vector databases), ingest pipelines and indexing/serving layers is a plus

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