Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning - Recommendations

Company Description

Etsy is the global marketplace for unique and creative goods. We build, power, and evolve the tools and technologies that connect entrepreneurs with buyers around the world. As an Etsy employee, you’ll tackle unique problems alongside talented coworkers committed to Keeping Commerce Human. We're large enough that you'll focus on meaningful, complex challenges, but small enough that you can make a rewarding impact.

Job Description

About the team

Our teams are responsible for recommendations. Our aim is to present the best of Etsy’s inventory. As an engineer on our team, you will play a major role in improving the shopping experience for millions of Etsy buyers. We’re a cross-functional group of engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and researchers.

With your help, we are giving our buyers better tools to find what they are looking for and to help them form a connection with our sellers. In this role, you will put your skills to use by helping... us improve the ranking and suggestions of localized results through machine learning algorithms. You will also build workflows and pipelines to optimally transform data into appropriate results for our buyers. You will join a hardworking team of engineers to collaborate on all of these projects.

In this role, you will have the opportunity to work with our Data Science and ML team, Data Platform team and many more product squads. We’re a growing team with a huge impact that builds tools and platform capabilities for data scientists and ML engineers to access feature data, build machine learning models, test hypotheses and productionize them on our ML platform hosted in Google Cloud. We value empathy, communication and technical skills equally. Here’s a taste of the problems we’re solving:

• How can we help someone find that flawless item, even when they don’t know what they’re looking for?
• How can the recommendations experience make Etsy come to life and feel as vibrant as the community of makers that’s behind it?
• How can we understand buyer’s motives and interests to personalize their experience?
• How can we help buyers to explore the breadth of Etsy's inventory?

Our production systems rely on PHP, JavaScript, Java, Python and Scala; we are proud to have an engineering culture that encourages career growth and learning. You can learn more about our philosophies, tools, and some of the challenges we’ve been solving on our Engineering blog: http://codeascraft.com/

We are language-agnostic in our approach to interviewing.

This role is located (eventually) in either our SF office or our Brooklyn HQ. We’re also open to remote hires within all U.S. states except Hawaii and Alaska.

Qualifications

• Experience with objective-oriented programming languages: Python, Java, Scala, etc.
• Familiarity with machine learning and deep learning solutions across the entire machine learning stack, from data collection to evaluation
• Experience with machine learning frameworks (like PySpark, Scalding, etc.)
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.

About the role

In this role you will:

• Contribute at all levels of Etsy’s recommendations stack, ranging from application back-end technologies (PHP, Java, Python, MySQL, Scala, Vertica) as well as machine learning stack (PySpark, Scalding, Airflow).
• Work multi-functionally with various engineering teams (e.g. machine learning infrastructure, data science, search experience), participating in design, prioritization and implementation.
• Develop and train machine learning data sources and models, both to iterate on existing features and develop new features.
• Use feature engineering tools and principles to clean and transform data into signals driving listing quality
• Deploy models to production, sometimes including application development for your feature.
• Provide detailed and constructive design and code reviews.
• Empathy, communication, and technical skill are valued equally.

About you

You will do well in this role if you:

• Enjoy thinking about the implications of your work on end users.
• You are comfortable collaborating with Product Managers, Data Analysts, and Designers to ensure that you are delivering impactful product features.
• Have experience operating within a large codebase and working to build simplicity from sophisticated systems, including using experiments and data to drive decision making.
• Are an analytical problem solver and understand how to wield data to make informed decisions about your work.
• Write understandable, testable code with an eye towards maintainability.
• You turn ideas into deeply reliable and well-tested code that other people – or you, six months into the future – will find easy to comprehend and modify.
• You have worked with machine learning and understand the needs of data scientists and ML engineers.
• You have proven engineering and coding skills, data structure knowledge and ability to write high performance production quality code.

Additional Information

What's Next

If you're interested in joining the team at Etsy, please send a cover letter and resume telling us why you'd be right for the position. As you’ve hopefully seen already, Etsy is a place that values individuality and variety. We don’t want you to be like everyone else — we want you to be like you! So write to us and tell us what you’re all about.

Our Promise

At Etsy, we believe that a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace makes us a more relevant, more competitive, and more resilient company. We encourage people from all backgrounds, ages, abilities, and experiences to apply. Etsy is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ancestry, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital or family status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression, pregnancy or caregiver status, veteran status, or any other legally protected status. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations to participate in the job application and interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. While Etsy supports visa sponsorship, sponsorship opportunities may be limited to certain roles and skillsets.

For U.S. roles only

Many Etsy roles are open to remote candidates, and you'll be able to identify which ones within the location header of each job description. We’re open to remote hires from all U.S. states except Hawaii and Alaska. For candidates who will work remotely from Colorado, visit this link for information related to Colorado's Equal Pay for Equal Work Act