Machine Learning Engineer, Search - Mercari

Introduction

Circulate all forms of value to unleash the potential in all people

"What can I do to help society thrive with the finite resources we have?" The Mercari marketplace app was born in 2013 out of this thought by our founder Shintaro Yamada as he traveled the world. We believe that by circulating all forms of value, not just physical things and money, we can create opportunities for anyone to realize their dreams and contribute to society and the people around them. Mercari aims to use technology to connect people all over the world and create a world where anyone can unleash their potential.For more information about Mercari Group’s mission, see Mercari's Culture Doc.

Equal Opportunity Hiring

Here at Mercari, we work to realize a world in which no one’s potential is limited by their background and everyone has the opportunity to freely create value. We also firmly believe that a mindset of Inclusion & Diversity is essential for us to achieve our mission.

This, of course, extends to our hiring practices as well. Mercari is committed to eliminating discrimination based on age, gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, physical disability, and other such factors so that anyone who shares our mission and values can join us, regardless of their background. For more details, please read our I&D Statement.

Position Overview

Work Responsibilities

Work on ML architecture and feature engineering that optimizes our search metrics 

Target Teams: Search Ranking, Search Relevance 

• Optimize the search quality to provide the best search and shopping experience on Japan's largest C2C marketplace platform
• Research and implement appropriate ML algorithms, design and develop machine learning applications for Search at Mercari Marketplace
• Keep up-to-date with the latest research and advancements in the field of machine learning, and combine information retrieval technology with modern machine learning methods from related fields such as NLP, Computer Vision, Multimodal, LLM, and so on
• Design engineering infrastructure to support machine learning systems at scale
• Apply software engineering rigor and best practices to machine learning, including CI/CD, automation, etc.
• Have product sense in making connections between technical success with business success
• Conduct experiments, A/B testing, and evaluations to measure the performance and effectiveness of various ML models.
• Experiment with large-scale data sets to gain insights and identify opportunities for improvement

Unique and Bold Challenges

• Develop libraries and frameworks to improve the availability of machine learning/search systems
• Improve the existing machine learning/search infrastructure and leverage industry-leading best practices to help the AI/search team operate
• Disseminate the best practices of machine learning/search engine operation, improve the development process, and improve the skills of engineers
• Develop and improve monitoring and logging systems for the evaluation of machine learning models/search experiments
• Collaborate with other teams to develop large-scale infrastructure

Required Experience

• Experience with machine learning frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch) and libraries (e.g., scikit-learn, NumPy, pandas)
• Deep understanding of information retrieval including search relevance, ranking and query understanding
• Understanding end-to-end machine learning development process starting from experimentation to deploying ML models in large scale production systems
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Have hands-on experience in the NLP realm such as tokenization, language modeling, indexing, text classification, etc.

Preferred Experience

• Experience implementing semantic search and/or learning to rank in production systems
• Experience working with Search / Recommender systems

Language Requirements

• English: Independent (CEFR - B2)
• Japanese: Basic (CEFR - A2) Preferred
  *For details about CEFR, see here

Related Articles

• Conversation between Machine Learning Engineers. Meet @ lain21 and @ chica #WeMakeMercari

Working Conditions

Employment Status

Full-time

• Probationary period: First 3 months after joining the company. (During this period your contract conditions will be the same as that of a permanent employee.)

Office

Roppongi

• Smoking is prohibited within our offices
• Mercari has introduced a work style policy called “Your Choice.” Each member is free to choose whether they want to work in the office or work fully remote. *Exceptions made for certain kinds of work.

Work Hours

• Full flextime (no “core time” or “flex time”)
  *Does not apply to all positions

Holidays

• Two days off per week (as well as national holidays, New Year's break, etc.)
• Paid leave, congratulatory and bereavement leave, relax days, sick leave

Salary

• Annual salary paid in 12 monthly installments (including fixed overtime allowance)
• Based on skills, experience, and abilities
• Reviewed twice a year
  

Benefits

• Complete health and social insurance
• Incentive program
• Support systems, including those that benefit the employee’s family members
  *See this page for details.

Support

• Relocation support
• Language learning support
• Translation/interpretation support
  *See this page for details.

Media

Corporate Sites

• Mercari, Inc.
• Merpay, Inc. [Japanese]
• Mercoin, Inc.
• Mercari US

Owned Media

• Mercari Careers
• Mercari Engineering Portal
• Mercan - Introduces the people that make Mercari
• Mercari US Careers
• Mercari US Blog
• Mercari AI