Senior Backend Engineer, Core Discovery

Remote; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical & dental

Food budget

Equity

Culture & learning

Unlimited vacation

Parental leave

Global travel stipend

Job summary

Raya is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to own core discovery services, with emphasis on Maps, Location surfaces, and Directory search.

You’ll collaborate with designers, data scientists, and cross-functional partners to build scalable, user-centric backend systems and drive continuous learning and operational excellence across the SDLC.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of hands-on software development experience delivering scalable backends.
• Strong mastery of system design and architecture.
• Experience building location-based systems with geospatial data and searches.
• Proficiency with PostgreSQL and MongoDB, including indexing and performance tuning.
• Experience with search systems (Elasticsearch or similar).
• Interest in adopting new AI tools and frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Product Ownership: lead components of Core Discovery, focusing on Maps and Location surfaces and Directory search.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver user-focused solutions.
• Stay current with Raya's tech ecosystem to ensure scalable, maintainable software.
• Advocate for top-tier user experiences using data-driven feedback loops.
• Ensure SDLC adherence with agile practices and CI/CD.

Skills

Node.js

TypeScript

Backend systems

Geospatial data

Elasticsearch

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

AI tooling

Job description

Senior Backend Engineers at Raya love building and operating server software and have been recognized as leaders in past roles. The ideal candidate will have had 6+ years of experience and grown within their organization, demonstrating both results and leadership. You will join the Core Discovery team at an impactful time of high growth.

Core Discovery owns how members discover people and places: our Maps and Location surfaces and our Directory search. Maps is our near-term focus, so we are especially excited about engineers who have built location-based systems and want to own that domain end to end.

We prioritize learning and teamwork and love giving people the opportunity to champion solutions to big challenges and grow into better versions of themselves. A great candidate is excited to support the backend team's initiatives. They are diligent and they design software architecture in a scalable manner. Finally, they believe in Raya's vision, which is to enrich lives by fostering relationships through quality, in person interactions.

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

• Product Ownership: Collaborate, build, and lead key components of our Core Discovery services, with a focus on the Maps and Location surfaces and our Directory search experience.

• Collaboration: Work hand-in-hand with cross-functional teams, ranging from UX designers to data scientists, ensuring our solutions are comprehensive and user focused.

• Continuous Learning: Stay updated with the latest in Raya's tech ecosystem, ensuring our solutions are scalable, maintainable, and innovative.

• User-Centric Development: Prioritize and advocate for top-tier user experiences, utilizing feedback loops and data-driven methodologies to define and refine product features.

• Operational Excellence: Navigate the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), ensuring agile methodologies, CI/CD practices, and Raya's best practices are integrated into all development phases.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of hands-on experience in modern software development environments, with a track record of delivering scalable and maintainable systems.

• Demonstrated expertise in system design, architecture, and mastery in Node.js and TypeScript.

• Proven experience in building and scaling backend systems in production at a startup or fast-moving environment.

• Production experience with location-based systems: geospatial data, geo indexing, proximity and nearby queries, and mapping surfaces. This is the primary need for this role.

• Experience building search systems (relevance, ranking, Elasticsearch or similar) for a consumer product. Strongly preferred.

• Strong data fundamentals across a relational database (PostgreSQL) and a document store (MongoDB), including indexing and query performance.

• Enthusiasm around new AI tools and frameworks, and a willingness to quickly adopt emerging best practices.

What Sets You Apart

• Visionary: You think beyond the present, anticipating future technological trends and their implications on the Raya Community.

• Empathetic Leader: You naturally resonate with colleagues, users, and collaborative teams, fostering a culture of understanding and innovation.

• Growth-oriented: You possess a perpetual learner's mindset, open to challenges, and always seeking opportunities to expand your technical horizons.

• Impact-driven: With a knack for identifying the 'big picture', you prioritize tasks that maximize impact, aligning with Raya's overarching goals.

• Productivity-obsessed: You value tools, workflows, and habits that maximize team velocity.

• Bias toward shipping and iteration: You're able to build quickly, learn, and refine in short cycles.