Senior Backend Engineer - Search & Recommendations

Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s work marketplace. We serve everyone from one-person startups to large, Fortune 100 enterprises with a powerful, trust-driven platform that enables companies and talent to work together in new ways that unlock their potential.

Last year, more than $3.8 billion of work was done through Upwork by skilled professionals who are gaining more control by finding work they are passionate about and innovating their careers.

We're looking for an experienced Senior Backend Engineer to join our Al team in the Search & Recommendations domain. In this role, you will be building cutting-edge search & recommendation systems that better connect companies and talents and elevate our AI  strategies to drive significant business growth. As a senior Backend Engineer, you will have the opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds in the industry and contribute to innovative and customer-impacting products that shape the future of work. If you are passionate about pushing the boundaries of search and AI/ML technologies, thrive in a collaborative, results-oriented culture, and are excited about our mission, we invite you to join us.

Responsibilities:

• Architect, build, maintain and improve search systems and AI/ML services that scale with the growing demands of our applications and state of the art search capabilities 

• Collaborate with frontend and backend teams to design and implement API that align with business requirements and optimize backend processes to enable low-latency and high-reliability retrieval and ranking needs

• Conduct thorough code reviews and drive enhancements to boost API performance and functionality.

• Create and maintain comprehensive documentation for our services ensuring transparency and knowledge sharing with the team.

• Stay up-to-date with the latest trends and advancements in software development and AI and evaluate their potential impact on our projects.

What it takes to catch our eye:

• Strong Industry experience with large scale production grade systems as a software engineer and Indexing experience with Elasticsearch, OpenSearch or Apache Solr

• Strong  experience in Java programming with a record of delivering robust and high-quality code with unit tests 

• Solid understanding of API Design Principles and CI/CD 

• Exposure to machine learning concepts and workflows with an understanding of how services support machine learning models

• Excellent communication skills and ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment and globally distributed teams and adapt to evolving project requirements.

The annual base salary for this position in California and Washington ranges from $144,000.00 - $195,000.00. The range displayed reflects the minimum and maximum salary for this position in California and Washington, and individual base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Additionally, this position is eligible for the annual bonus plan or sales incentive plan and eligibility to participate in our long term equity incentive program.

Change the world around you.

At Upwork, you'll shape talent solutions for how the world works today. We are a remote-first organization working together to create exciting remote work opportunities for a global community of professionals. While we have physical offices in San Francisco and Chicago, we also hire full-time employees in 19 states in the United States.

Our vibrant culture is built on shared values and our mission to create economic opportunities so that people have better lives. We foster amazing teams, put our community first, and have a bias toward action. We encourage everyone to bring their whole selves to work and grow together through development opportunities, mentorship, and employee resource groups. And oh yeah, we've also got amazing benefits - including medical insurance for you and your family, unlimited PTO, 401(k) with matching, 12 weeks of paid parental leave, and a generous Employee Stock Purchase Plan. Check out our Life at Upwork page to learn more about our benefits and the employee experience.

Check out our Careers page to learn more about the employee experience.

Upwork is proudly committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse and inclusive workforce. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we never discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

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