Software Engineer III, Search and Recommendations

As a Software Engineer III, you are a technical leader and a key driver of our platform’s architectural evolution. You will move beyond executing defined tasks to taking ownership of complex, ambiguous problem spaces. You will be responsible for designing, building, and scaling the next generation of our search and recommendation infrastructure.

In this role, you will balance hands-on development with technical mentorship-guiding junior engineers, driving engineering excellence, and partnering with cross-functional leaders to turn long-term business strategies into robust technical realities.

• Architect & Scale: Lead the design, development, and deployment of high-throughput, low-latency microservices and data pipelines that power real-time, ML-driven decisions.
• Technical Leadership: Champion engineering excellence by establishing best practices for code quality, testing, CI/CD, and system observability across the team.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with Product Managers, Machine Learning Scientists, Data Scientists, and Principal Engineers to shape the team’s technical roadmap and deliver integrated, intelligent solutions.
• Mentorship & Growth: Actively mentor Software Engineers (Levels I and II) through constructive code reviews, architectural design feedback, and pair programming, fostering a culture of continuous learning.
• System Ownership: Drive the operational resilience, cost-optimization, and monitoring of critical production systems, taking a proactive approach to identifying and mitigating technical debt.
• Innovation: Evaluate and integrate emerging technologies within the Google Cloud Platform ecosystem to keep our search and recommendation engine at the cutting edge.

• Education: Bachelor’s degree, or foreign equivalent, in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Experience: 5-8 years of professional full-time software development experience, with a proven track record of delivering impactful results in a senior or lead capacity.
• Distributed Systems Expertise: Deep, practical experience architecting, scaling, and maintaining high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems in production environments.
• Language Proficiency: Expert-level proficiency in Java (Spring Boot framework) and/or Python.
• Production ML Experience: Proven experience deploying, monitoring, and optimizing Machine Learning models or complex algorithms at scale in a user-facing environment.
• Cloud & Infrastructure: Hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or equivalent cloud providers, containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and robust CI/CD pipelines.
• Data & Streaming: Strong expertise in data modeling (SQL and NoSQL databases) and stream-processing technologies like Kafka or Spark.
• Operational Excellence: Strong background in system observability, including advanced monitoring, alerting setups, and managing high-severity incident responses.
• Communication Skills: Exceptional ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Wayfair is revolutionizing how people shop for their homes. We offer an extensive selection of furniture, decor, and housewares, committed to providing a seamless and personalized experience for millions of customers worldwide.

The Search and Recommendations team is fundamental to Wayfair’s personalization strategy. We develop and apply cutting-edge AI models and large-scale, high-throughput systems to help customers discover and purchase products. Our platform handles over a billion calls daily, and our work directly impacts hundreds of millions in revenue. As part of this team, your work will ensure an exceptional, seamless customer experience at an unprecedented scale., Wayfair is one of the world’s largest online destinations for the home. Whether you work in our global headquarters in Boston, or in our warehouses or offices throughout the world, we’re reinventing the way people shop for their homes. Through our commitment to industry-leading technology and creative problem-solving, we are confident that Wayfair will be home to the most rewarding work of your career. If you’re looking for rapid growth, constant learning, and dynamic challenges, then you’ll find that amazing career opportunities are knocking.