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Senior Engineering Manager, Recommender Systems

Role overview

Summary

This role focuses on leading the backend team responsible for the recommender systems at Raya. You will collaborate with the Machine Learning team to enhance user experience while maintaining system reliability and performance.

Qualifications

  • 3+ years managing engineers, with direct responsibility for hiring, performance management, career development, and delivery.
  • Experience leading or building production recommender systems at scale.
  • Hands-on depth in high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems that serve millions of users.
  • Expertise in Go, Java/JVM, or a similar backend language; Postgres, and AWS/GCP, and Kubernetes.

Responsibilities

  • Build, coach, and retain a high-performing backend team that specializes in recommender systems.
  • Own reliable, low-latency production systems, observability, and incident response for recommendations.
  • Create and execute a technical strategy that is grounded in deep product intuition and empathy for the end-user experience.
  • Partner with the Machine Learning team to define roadmaps. Balance user-facing improvements with investments in infrastructure, reliability, and experimentation.

Key facts

Hard skills

Other skills

  • Leadership
  • Team Management
  • Empathy

About the company

Raya logo

Raya

  • Consumer Internet & Social Platforms
  • 51–200
At Raya, we're focused on building a solution to a problem our team has often encountered: there's no good way to meet like-minded people online and if you do, it's very hard to take these interactions into the real world. That's why we set out to create a trusted online community where people felt comfortable finding life partners, friends, and work collaborations. Just as we bring people together around the world, we work hard to build a community here at Raya. We are a family of talented individuals who have all devoted our careers to finding exciting ways to foster human connection through technology. We have openings around the world: Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, and Mexico City. If you're interested in joining our team, feel free to reach out to us at careers@rayatheapp.com.

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Job description

As Engineering Manager for Recommender Systems, you'll lead the team that builds the backend retrieval and ranking infrastructure behind recommendations at Raya. You'll partner closely with the head of ML to drive our tech strategy and ensure our members get the best experience possible on the core surface of our product. 

We are looking for someone who is technically strong, has deep experience with production recommender systems, and has intuitive product-focused user empathy. 

We offer comprehensive medical and dental coverage, $50 a day food delivery budget, equity based employment, a great culture, learning opportunities, unlimited vacation, 12 weeks paid parental leave, and we pay all employees $1,000 a year to go somewhere in the world that they’ve never been because of our values of human connection, empathy, and curiosity.


Responsibilities
  • Build, coach, and retain a high-performing backend team that specializes in recommender systems. 

  • Own reliable, low-latency production systems, observability, and incident response for recommendations. Catch regressions in latency, quality, or fairness before users notice.

  • Create and execute a technical strategy that is grounded in deep product intuition and empathy for the end-user experience. 

  • Partner with the Machine Learning team to define roadmaps. Balance user-facing improvements with investments in infrastructure, reliability, and experimentation.

  • Work with Data Science to co-own experimentation processes, tools, and best practices.


  • Qualifications
  • 3+ years managing engineers, with direct responsibility for hiring, performance management, career development, and delivery.

  • Experience leading or building production recommender systems at scale. 

  • Hands-on depth in high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems that serve millions of users.

  • Expertise in Go, Java/JVM, or a similar backend language; Postgres, and AWS/GCP, and Kubernetes.


  • What Sets You Apart
  • Experience with social networks or two-sided marketplaces in a subscription setting: you understand reciprocal interest, exposure, liquidity, and how great recommendations create long-term retentive value. 

  • Familiarity with how machine learning and AI fit into modern recommender systems.

  • Experience with retrieval infrastructure such as Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, vector search, or feature stores.

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