Senior Backend Software Engineer

Yahoo serves as a trusted guide for hundreds of millions of people globally, helping them achieve their goals online through our portfolio of iconic products. The Senior Backend Software Engineer will collaborate with data scientists to transition research prototypes into high-performance backend services and design scalable architectures for guided search applications.

Responsibilities:

• Model Orchestration & Productionization: Partner with data scientists to transition research prototypes into high-performance backend services, leveraging AI-driven deployment pipelines to ensure seamless model integration
• Scalable Architecture: Design and operate high-throughput, low-latency APIs for Guided Search, applying AI-driven performance diagnostics to optimize system bottlenecks
• Lifecycle Ownership: Own the end-to-end serving lifecycle for ML-powered systems, from feature retrieval and online inference to automated monitoring and iteration
• Data Engineering: Build and maintain robust data pipelines using Spark/PySpark, implementing AI-augmented data validation to ensure consistency and freshness at scale
• Operational Excellence: Define and uphold production-readiness standards for scalability and fault tolerance in a distributed AWS environment
• Workflow Optimization: Identify and implement AI-driven efficiencies in the development lifecycle, utilizing AI pair-programming and automation to replace manual, repetitive engineering tasks
• Collaborative Leadership: Collaborate cross-functionally to translate product requirements into evolving backend architectures, acting as a lead for major portions of squad-level software solutions
• Instrumentation & Experimentation: Instrument services with advanced logging and metrics, using AI-assisted analysis to interpret A/B testing results and drive continuous improvement

Requirements:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a related field
• 4+ years of professional experience building large-scale, highly scalable backend systems (IC4 level)
• Strong programming skills in C++ and Python, with a focus on writing production-quality, performant code
• Experience designing and implementing backend APIs and services within service-oriented architectures
• Proficiency in AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor) to accelerate code generation, debugging, and system optimization
• Hands-on experience with large-scale data processing frameworks such as PySpark or Spark
• Experience integrating and operating machine learning models within high-QPS backend systems
• Experience developing and deploying services within AWS environments
• Experience with prompt engineering or structured interaction with LLMs to support generative AI feature development
• Commitment to staying current on emerging AI engineering tools and proactively suggesting improvements to the engineering workflow
• Knowledge of advanced performance tuning for distributed, cloud-based systems
• Experience leading small project workstreams or mentoring junior engineers in a collaborative environment