Staff Backend Engineer - Personalization

Key Skills

Agile methodologies, Algorithms, API, Data structuring, Java Programming, Machine learning techniques

Job Description

The Personalization team makes deciding what to play next easier and more enjoyable for every listener. From Blend to Discover Weekly, we’re behind some of Spotify’s most-loved features. We built them by understanding the world of music and podcasts better than anyone else. Join us and you’ll keep millions of users listening by making great recommendations to each and every one of them. We ask that our team members be physically located in Central European time or Eastern Standard/Daylight time zones for the purposes of our collaboration hours.

We are looking for a Staff Engineer with significant expertise in Backend Engineering to join the Personalization team, a collection of teams that is redefining Spotify’s capability to be a leader in the audio experiences space. We’re doing this by building a playlist ecosystem that benefits listeners, creators and Spotify.

We're looking for someone to help evolve our technical vision for the AI DJ product. This role will also consider multidisciplinary implications of our backend architecture across many subject areas such as machine learning, data engineering, and front end technologies.

What You'll Do

• Drive the technical direction of the AI DJ architecture, with a focus on ML, and lead the implementation of this evolution.
• Architect, develop, and operate Java services deployed to millions of users.
• Coordinate technical projects across teams within Spotify.
• Facilitate collaboration with other specialists to tackle exciting and ambitious problems.
• Be a technical leader and valued contributor in an autonomous, multi-functional agile team.
• Collaborate with other engineers, machine learning engineers, product owners, and designers to identify and solve meaningful problems, crafting exciting AI DJ sessions for users worldwide.
• Participate in the Spotify-wide backend developer community affecting and driving our architecture across the company.

Who You Are

• You have experience working directly with partners to understand, document and develop APIs and systems to meet their requirements, driving increased adoption and reducing reliance on custom one-off implementations.
• You have experience writing distributed, high-volume services and know how to deploy and keep them running in production.
• Must be deeply familiar with the concepts of machine learning and recommendations
• Must have recent examples of working with ML Engineers to build backend ML Infrastructure at scale (for example, model serving, feature serving)
• You love working in an environment where you constantly experiment and iterate quickly
• You have a deep understanding of system design, data structures, and algorithms
• You care about quality and scaling systems with a focus on shipping high quality code.

Where You'll Be

• We are a distributed workforce enabling our band members to find a work mode that is best for them!
• Where in the world? For this role, it can be within the Americas region in which we have a work location
• Prefer an office to work from home instead? Not a problem! We have plenty of options for your working preferences. Find more information about our Work From Anywhere options here.
• Working hours? We operate within the Eastern Standard time zone for collaboration

The United States base range for this position is $186,000 - $265,000, plus equity. The benefits available for this position include health insurance, six month paid parental leave, 401(K) retirement plan, 23 paid days off, 13 paid flexible holidays, paid sick leave.

Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens.

Spotify transformed music listening forever when we launched in 2008. Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the chance to enjoy and be passionate about these creators. Everything we do is driven by our love for music and podcasting. Today, we are the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service.