Senior Recommender Systems Engineering Lead

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

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive medical and dental

Equity-based employment

Unlimited vacation

12 weeks paid parental leave

Global travel stipend $1000/year

Job summary

Raya is seeking an Engineering Manager for Recommender Systems to lead a backend team building the retrieval and ranking infrastructure behind recommendations on our core product surface.

You will partner with the head of ML to drive tech strategy, ensure low latency, scalable systems, and strong user-focused outcomes. This role requires deep production experience and a passion for high-quality software.

Qualifications

• 3+ years managing engineers, with hiring and performance responsibilities.
• Experience leading production recommender systems at scale.
• Hands-on depth in high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Build, coach, and retain a high-performing backend team focused on recommender systems.
• Own reliable, low-latency production systems, observability, and incident response for recommendations.
• Create and execute a technical strategy grounded in product intuition and user empathy.

Skills

People management

Recommender systems

Distributed systems

Go or Java

PostgreSQL

Cloud platforms

Kubernetes

Observability/Monitoring

Tools

Elasticsearch/OpenSearch

Vector search

Feature stores

Job description

Raya is seeking an Engineering Manager for Recommender Systems to lead a backend team building the retrieval and ranking infrastructure behind recommendations on our core product surface.

You will partner with the head of ML to drive tech strategy, ensure low latency, scalable systems, and strong user-focused outcomes. This role requires deep production experience and a passion for high-quality software.