Senior Engineering Manager - Discovery

United States Digital Space LLC; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 231,000 - 318,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Benefits

Job summary

United States Digital Space LLC is seeking an experienced leader to head the Discovery Experience team in San Francisco. You will shape search, recommendations, and Gen‑AI features, partnering with product, design, and ML to deliver fast, relevant, and personalized experiences for retailers.

You will build high‑scale, low‑latency systems, align engineering with business priorities, and hire top engineers. The role offers equity and benefits, with a hybrid in‑office schedule in San Francisco.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of engineering experience.
• 3+ years in engineering leadership.
• Experience in search, discovery, or related product domains.
• Hands-on familiarity with AI and ML-powered product development including LLMs.
• Strong product sensibility and communication skills.
• Experience driving cross-functional initiatives and aligning roadmaps.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the technical vision for the discovery experience, spanning search UX, recommendations, and AI-powered discovery.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of engineers focused on the retailer-facing discovery surface.
• Drive the integration of AI/LLM capabilities into the discovery experience—from natural language search to personalized results.
• Partner with product and design to raise the bar on search UX and accessibility.
• Enable rapid experimentation across discovery surfaces with ML teams on ranking and personalization.
• Champion observability and quality across the discovery stack with instrumentation.
• Drive cross-functional collaboration across relevance, ML, infrastructure, and product engineering.
• Attract, hire, and retain top engineering talent with a focus on diverse perspectives.
• Work with leadership to align discovery investments with growth strategy.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Search & discovery

AI/ML & LLMs

Product sense

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering

Job description

About the company

the company is a technology wholesale platform built on the belief that the future is local. Independent retailers around the globe collectively represent a multi-hundred-billion-dollar wholesale market that has historically been fragmented and offline. At the company, we’re using the power of tech, data, and machine learning to connect this thriving community of entrepreneurs across the globe. Picture your favorite boutique in town — we help them discover the best products from around the world to sell in their stores. With the right tools and insights, we believe that we can level the playing field so businesses can grow and local communities can thrive.

We’re looking for smart, resourceful and passionate people to join us as we power the shop local movement. If you believe in community, come join ours.

About the Role:

The Discovery Experience team at the company sits at the intersection of search, evaluate, and personalization — shaping how retailers find the products they love. Our mission is to build the most intuitive, intelligent, and delightful discovery experience in wholesale: one that feels less like a search engine and more like a trusted merchant with an encyclopedic knowledge of what’s in stock and what will sell.

We’re looking for an experienced leader to lead our Discovery Experience team. In this role, you will partner closely with product, design, and machine learning teams to craft search and discovery experiences that are fast, relevant, and deeply personalized. You bring a strong point of view on what great search UX looks like, you believe AI is transforming how people find things, and you’re excited to build at that frontier.

You will own a critical part of the discovery experience, spanning search, recommendations, and Gen‑AI experience that drives a meaningful share of marketplace engagement, conversion, and retailer success. This role sits at the center of some of the company’s most important product and technical challenges: building high‑scale, low‑latency systems that help retailers navigate millions of products with speed, relevance, and trust, while pushing the frontier of AI‑powered discovery.

As a leader in Discovery, you will shape not only team execution, but also the longer‑term technical and organizational direction of discovery at the company — influencing strategy across product engineering, ML, and infrastructure. You’ll help unify retrieval, ranking, personalization, and UX into a cohesive system, while enabling fast experimentation and measurable business impact.

What You'll Do:

• Define and execute the technical vision for the company's discovery experience, spanning search UX, recommendations, and AI‑powered discovery, ensuring every retailer can effortlessly find what they're looking for.

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of engineers focused on the retailer‑facing discovery surface, fostering a culture of craft, ownership, and continuous learning.

• Drive the integration of Algo and AI/LLM‑powered capabilities into the discovery experience — from natural language search to intelligent query understanding and personalized results.

• Partner with product and design to raise the bar on search UX, ensuring the experience is intuitive, accessible, and optimized for how retailers actually shop.

• Enable rapid experimentation across discovery surfaces, working closely with ML teams to iterate on ranking, surfacing, and personalization.

• Champion observability and quality across the discovery stack, building the right instrumentation to understand user behavior and proactively improve the experience.

• Drive cross‑functional collaboration across relevance, ML, infrastructure, and product engineering to deliver cohesive, end‑to‑end discovery improvements.

• Attract, hire, and retain top engineering talent, fostering an inclusive and psychologically safe team culture that encourages bold ideas and diverse perspectives.

• Work closely with leadership to align discovery investments with the company's growth strategy and marketplace priorities.

You Might Thrive in this Role If You:

• Have experience building search or discovery products end-to-end, with a strong appreciation for the interplay between UX, relevance, and infrastructure.

• Are genuinely excited about AI‑powered discovery — you've worked with LLMs, semantic search, or conversational interfaces and believe they're reshaping how people find things.

• Have a user‑first mindset: you think deeply about search UX, query understanding, and how small UI decisions drive big differences in retailer satisfaction and conversion.

• Have a strong background in building and shipping consumer or B2B product features at scale, with experience collaborating closely with product and design.

• Have led high‑performing engineering teams, with a track record of hiring, developing, and retaining strong engineers in ambiguous, fast‑moving environments.

• Enjoy working across disciplines — with relevance engineers, ML practitioners, product managers, and designers — to deliver experiences that are greater than the sum of their parts.

• Are comfortable navigating ambiguity and bringing clarity and structure to complex, multi‑team problems.

• Believe in a culture of radical candor and psychological safety, and lead by example in encouraging diverse viewpoints and open discussion.

Qualifications:

• 8+ years of experience in engineering roles, with at least 3+ years in engineering leadership positions.

• Demonstrated experience working on search, discovery, recommendations, or related product domains — either on the UX/product side or the relevance/infrastructure side (ideally both).

• Hands‑on familiarity with AI and ML‑powered product development, including experience integrating or shipping LLM‑based features, semantic search, or personalization systems.

• Strong product sensibility and communication skills, with the ability to translate ambiguous business problems into clear technical direction.

• Experience driving cross‑functional initiatives and aligning engineering roadmaps with product and business priorities.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Salary range:

San Francisco: The salary range for this role is $231,000 - $318,000 per year.

This role will also be eligible for equity and benefits. Actual base pay will be determined based on permissible factors such as transferable skills, work experience, market demands, and primary work location. The base pay range provided is subject to change and may be modified in the future.

**Hybrid the company employees currently go into the office 3 days per week on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and a third flex day of their choosing (Monday, Wednesday, or Friday).* Additionally, hybrid in‑office roles will have the flexibility to work remotely up to 4 weeks per year. Specific Workplace and Information Technology positions may require onsite attendance 5 days per week as will be indicated in the job posting.*

Why you’ll love working at the company

• Move fast: You'll own meaningful problems that serve customers around the globe with the agency to move fast and see your results clearly.

• Equipped to scale: We invest in what matters, including the latest enterprise AI tools, to help you work smarter and get more out of every day.

• Best in class: