Senior Software Engineer, 1

Role Overview

Senior Software Engineer on the AI/ML Engineering Platform team. You will build and own widely used platform components that enable AI/ML-driven search and recommendations for content on People Inc. sites.

Responsibilities

Core AI/ML Platform & Distributed Systems (70%)

• Design and build scalable distributed backend systems compatible with AI/ML infrastructure for search, retrieval, ranking, recommendation, and personalization.
• Develop and maintain ML pipelines using Vertex AI Pipelines for training, evaluation, and deployment.
• Create and own data pipelines for feature generation, model training, and analytics.
• Own vector generation and storage/retrieval workflows using a vector database (Milvus mentioned).
• Implement model serving with KServe and build low-latency inference APIs using FastAPI.
• Build observability/monitoring for models and pipelines: performance, drift, failures, and data quality.
• Collaborate with Data Science, Product, and platform teams to define and deliver ML-driven features.
• Investigate and resolve production issues across data pipelines, models, and services; improve reliability and performance.
• Maintain clear documentation for pipelines, models, APIs, and operational processes.
• Build internal tools and dashboards for visibility into data processing and model behavior.
• Contribute to engineering standards, code quality, and best practices for Python-based services and ML systems.
• Stay current with MLOps/ML infrastructure tooling and improve systems where it adds value.

Production Systems & Search/Serving Execution (30%)

• Own production systems and debug indexing, retrieval, ranking, and serving layers.
• Document pipelines, models, APIs, and system design.
• Apply best practices for Python-based ML systems, API design, and scalable infrastructure.
• Stay current with advancements in search, ranking, and recommendation and apply them practically.

Requirements

• 6+ years building scalable backend systems and services.
• 5+ years developing software in object-oriented languages with strong proficiency in Python.
• Strong proficiency in JavaScript/Node.js and TypeScript.
• Hands-on experience with Elasticsearch for search, indexing, and relevance tuning.
• Experience with event-driven systems using Apache Kafka.
• Strong understanding of version control (e.g., Git) and code platforms such as Bitbucket.
• Experience with observability/monitoring tools like Grafana, Kibana, and APM.
• Familiarity with AWS and GCP, plus containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes).
• Ability to deploy, version, and monitor models in production.
• Curiosity and willingness to learn newer AI/LLM and modern search/recommendation technologies.

Nice to Have

• Experience specifically aligned with AI/LLM infrastructure and modern search/recommendation systems (implied by curiosity/interest and platform focus).