Staff Software Engineer, Search

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Canada, +1 more country.

📋 Description

• Act as the technical leader for Babylist’s newly formed Search team.

• Transition Babylist’s search functionality in-house to enhance relevance and personalization of results.

• Determine the technical direction, prioritize initiatives, and make both technical and product-related decisions.

• Construct search architecture for indexing, retrieval, and serving, while planning the migration from the existing system.

• Establish quality metrics for search results and enhance query comprehension, ranking, and behavioral signals.

• Integrate search capabilities across Babylist products, third-party retailer products, guides, and registries.

• Merge search and recommendations utilizing user and registry information.

• Innovate conversational search with the Addie AI registry assistant.

• Navigate ambiguous business challenges from initial concept to production and assess customer impact.

• Develop and manage platforms and tools that will be utilized by other teams.

• Set standards, patterns, and evaluation frameworks for AI development.

• Collaborate with product, design, and data teams.

• Mentor Senior engineers through complex technical and ambiguous decisions.

• Engage in user interviews, review session recordings, and support ride-alongs.

⛳️ Requirements

• Proven experience as a staff-level software engineer.

• Demonstrated history of shipping production systems, allowing for the development of strong opinions.

• Experience in transforming team practices with AI, leading to widespread adoption of new methodologies.

• Practical experience in production search, encompassing indexing, retrieval, ranking, and query comprehension.

• Proven ability to build and maintain search services that are fast, relevant, and reliable as traffic and catalog size increase.

• Experience in assessing search quality both offline and online, including relevance evaluations and A/B testing.

• Capability to utilize query data, behavior patterns, and result quality assessments to inform product decisions.

• Ability to correlate search modifications with shopper behavior, conversion rates, or revenue impacts.

• Proficient in defining problems, designing systems, and managing them comprehensively.

• Experience tackling search-related challenges, preferably within the e-commerce sector.

• Competence in applying AI within engineering practices.

• Willingness to participate in a no-AI technical screening and an AI-assisted coding interview.

🏝️ Benefits

• Target annual bonus of 20 percent of base salary.

• Significant equity opportunities.

• RRSP matching program.

• Medical coverage paid for by the company.

• Comprehensive dental and vision coverage.

• Generous paid parental leave for both birthing and non-birthing parents.

• Gradual return-to-work initiative.

• Winter Wonder Week, a paid company-wide week off at year-end.

• Stipend for remote work expenses.

• Support for mental health and wellness.

• Remote-first work arrangement.

• Company-wide in-person gatherings held twice a year.