Sr. Software Engineer, Knowledge Base

Company Description

Etsy is the global marketplace for unique and creative goods. We build, power, and evolve the tools and technologies that connect millions of entrepreneurs with millions of buyers around the world. As an Etsy Inc. employee – whether a team member of Etsy, Reverb, Depop, or Elo7 – you’ll tackle unique, meaningful, and large-scale problems alongside passionate coworkers, all the while making a rewarding impact and Keeping Commerce Human.

Job Description

What’s the role?

We are looking for a Sr. Software Engineer to join the Personalization Platform in order to better understand Etsy’s unique inventory and enable personalized recommendations and ranked content for product teams across Etsy.

The Knowledge Base team is passionate about and dedicated to building an in-depth understanding of the unique world of Etsy. Our goal is to build, collect, and model product metadata to make sense of millions of unique items and users, enabling Etsy’s teams to craft relevant experiences. We are responsible for the end-to-end process of describing, collecting, enhancing and serving product and user structured data to our internal partner teams.

As a Sr. Software Engineer on the Knowledge Base Platform team you will be responsible for building our infrastructure and tooling that improves speed-to-delivery for important product and user structured data. You will be collaborating closely with our data scientists, taxonomists, ontologists, and product teams. Do you find joy in solving extremely complex problems, such as how to define the entities within a completely unique and handmade marketplace? If so, this could be the perfect match!

Our production systems rely on Scala, Python, PHP, and React; we are proud to have an engineering culture that encourages career growth and learning. Learn more about our philosophies, tools, and some of the challenges we’ve been solving on our Engineering blog, .

This is a full-time position reporting to the Engineering Manager. For this role, we are considering candidates based in the U.S. who are either remote, flex, or office-based. Etsy offers different work modes to meet the variety of needs and preferences of our team. Learn more about our flexible work options and vaccination policy here.

What does the day-to-day look like?

Build and contribute at all levels of Etsy’s knowledge base platform stack, ranging from application interfaces to the serving layer.

Work closely and collaboratively with various engineering teams participating in design, prioritization, and implementation.

Work closely with Taxonomists, Ontologists, and Applied Scientists to centralize concepts as well as mapping of business entities (e.g. listings) to those concepts.

Work closely with fellow Knowledge Base Platform engineers and Product teams to scale data access and continuously improve data consumption experience.

Provide detailed and constructive design and code reviews

Of course, this is just a sample of the kinds of work this role will require! You should assume that your role will encompass other tasks, too, and that your job duties and responsibilities may change from time to time at Etsy’s discretion, or otherwise applicable with local law.

Qualifications

Qualities that will help you thrive in this role are:

Validated software engineering and coding skills, including CS fundamentals like data structures and algorithms.

Experience with working on object-oriented programming languages like Python, Java, Scala, etc.

Experience with building large-scale, low-latency distributed systems and working within a machine learning environment at scale.

Successful track record of collaborating with machine learning scientists, product managers, data analysts, and designers

Ability to think analytically and understand how to wield data to make informed decisions about your work.

Shown success in turning ideas into deeply reliable and well-tested code with an eye towards maintainability.

Familiarity with (or curiosity about) machine learning and related frameworks (like PySpark, Spark, etc).

A trust in and commitment to Etsy’s vision, mission and values.

You may have experience with a few of the following: building and maintaining highly scalable Knowledge Base and/or Knowledge Graph systems, using semantic web technologies (e.g. RDF, SPARQL, SHACL, OWL, SKOS), XSD, knowledge of ontology implementation tools (e.g. Smartlogic Semaphore, webprotege), graph science analysis and algorithms.

Additional Information

What’s Next

If you’re interested in joining the team at Etsy, please share your resume with us and feel free to include a cover letter if you’d like. As we hope you’ve seen already, Etsy is a place that values individuality and variety. We don’t want you to be like everyone else — we want you to be like you! So tell us what you’re all about. Our Promise

At Etsy, we believe that a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace furthers relevance, resilience, and longevity. We encourage people from all backgrounds, ages, abilities, and experiences to apply. Etsy is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If, due to a disability, you need an accommodation during any part of the interview process, please let your recruiter know. While Etsy supports visa sponsorship, sponsorship opportunities may be limited to certain roles and skills. For U.S. roles only:

Many Etsy roles are open to remote candidates, and you’ll be able to identify which ones within the location header of each job description. We’re open to remote hires from all U.S. states except Hawaii and Alaska. For candidates who will work remotely from Colorado, visit this for information related to Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act.