Staff Backend Engineer - Home Foundations - Personalization

About the Role

Key Responsibilities

• Partner closely with Experimentation Platform, Surface Insights, CoreX and Home PZN teams to create an experimentation strategy that takes Home's online evaluation practices to the next level.
• Build relationships with Staff+ engineers across PZN and Experience missions in order to identify both problems and opportunities that are preventing product innovation.
• Create Home Experimentation strategies to ensure trustworthy online evaluations for stakeholders (all teams that run tests on home).
• Innovate in Home's dynamic configuration methodology for both experiment variants and home baseline product experience.
• Support all teams within Home Foundations - Nexus, Home Content Journey and HEAT - in their system and backend engineering needs.
• Identify tooling that can dramatically improve home recs explainability, debugging and reliability.
• Mentor backend engineers and influence technical strategy by setting high standards in methodology, reproducibility, and collaboration.
• Prototype new approaches and productionize solutions for Home experiences.

Requirements

• You're a current Staff Engineer who has been operating at this level for 1+ years, consistently taking on responsibilities aligned with the role.
• Extensive experience in designing system architectures that include machine learning models as key components in enabling the product experiences.
• Comfortable debugging experiment configurations from an engineering enablement and experimental design perspective while also able to lean into statistical concepts such as confidence intervals, p-values and power.
• Familiarity with different types of experiment setups: isolated vs. overlapping experiments, interaction effects, and holdout strategies.
• Able to understand end to end system architectures that include machine learning models to enable the larger product.
• Strong bias to action by building MVPs, prototypes and illustrating ideas through concise documents to drive initiatives forward.
• Accountable to senior tech leadership for meeting product and technology objectives and managing expectations if those are at risk.
• Demonstrated success leading technical initiatives and shaping strategic directions through cross-functional collaboration.
• Excellent communication skills and stakeholder management abilities; comfortable operating at the intersection of science and engineering.

Nice to Have

• Experience working within the context of online experimentation and evaluation practices.
• Knowledge of statistical concepts such as confidence intervals, p-values, and power analysis.
• Experience with machine learning models integrated into system architectures.

Qualifications

• Current Staff Engineer with 1+ years at this level.

Benefits & Perks

• United States base salary range of $194,000 - $277,000 plus equity.
• Health insurance.
• Six month paid parental leave.
• 401(k) retirement plan.
• Monthly meal allowance.
• 23 paid days off.
• 13 paid flexible holidays.
• Paid sick leave.