Remote Contract: Senior Backend Engineer, Search and Recommendations

Description:

• Upwork is seeking an experienced Senior Backend Engineer to join their AI team in the Search & Recommendations domain.
• The role involves building cutting-edge search and recommendation systems to connect companies and talents and enhance AI strategies for business growth.
• Responsibilities include architecting, building, maintaining, and improving search systems and AI/ML services that scale with application demands.
• The engineer will collaborate with frontend and backend teams to design and implement APIs that meet business requirements and optimize backend processes for low-latency and high-reliability retrieval and ranking.
• Conducting thorough code reviews and driving enhancements to boost API performance and functionality is essential.
• The role requires creating and maintaining comprehensive documentation for services to ensure transparency and knowledge sharing.
• Staying updated with the latest trends in software development and AI is necessary to evaluate their impact on projects.
• The engineer must manage their time independently to achieve project deliverables, estimated at 40 hours per week.
• Effective communication and collaboration in English are required, along with participation in project meetings and providing regular status updates.
• Participation in on-call pager duty schedules to respond to critical issues is expected.
• A commitment to continuous learning and improvement in both technical and soft skills is essential.
• Consistent availability from 8:00 am to 12:00 pm PST is required for team collaboration and meetings.

Requirements:

• Candidates must have strong industry experience with large-scale production-grade systems as a software engineer.
• Indexing experience with Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, or Apache Solr is required.
• Strong experience in Java programming with a proven record of delivering robust and high-quality code with unit tests is necessary.
• A solid understanding of API Design Principles and CI/CD is essential.
• Exposure to machine learning concepts and workflows, along with an understanding of how services support machine learning models, is required.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment with globally distributed teams are necessary.
• Candidates must be adaptable to evolving project requirements.

Benefits:

• Upwork is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce, ensuring no discrimination based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, or disability.
• The position offers the opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds in the industry and contribute to innovative products that shape the future of work.
• Employees will have the chance to push the boundaries of search and AI/ML technologies in a collaborative and results-oriented culture.