Software Engineer, Recommendation Systems

Meta; New York (NY); On-site; USD 271,000 - 347,000; Full time

Job summary

Meta is seeking a distinguished engineer to define the future of recommendation systems that serve billions across Facebook, Instagram, Reels, Marketplace, and more. You will set the technical direction for large-scale ranking, retrieval, and personalization infrastructure, combining ML research with production engineering to improve relevance and engagement for every user.

You will mentor engineers, drive cross‑functional initiatives, and influence product strategy while modernizing legacy

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, relevant technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 12+ years of experience designing, building, and scaling production recommendation, ranking, or personalization systems.
• Experience defining technical strategy and architecture for large‑scale machine learning systems, including retrieval, candidate generation, feature engineering, and multi‑objective ranking.
• Experience leading cross‑organizational engineering initiatives, including driving consensus across multiple teams and influencing technical direction at the organizational level.
• Experience developing and applying machine learning models at scale, from inception through production impact, including experimentation design and metric definition.
• Experience identifying and resolving systemic reliability, performance, or correctness issues across distributed machine learning and data infrastructure

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the multi‑year technical vision for recommendation and ranking systems across Meta, influencing architecture decisions that span retrieval, candidate generation, feature engineering, and multi‑objective ranking
• Identify and solve the hardest scalability and quality challenges in large‑scale recommendation pipelines, including those that cross multiple systems or fall at abstraction boundaries
• Architect extensible, reliable ranking and personalization infrastructure that serves as a foundational platform for multiple product teams and engineering organizations
• Develop and apply novel machine learning techniques to recommendation problems, translating research advances into production systems that deliver measurable improvements in user engagement and satisfaction
• Define new metrics and experimentation frameworks for evaluating long‑term recommendation quality, connecting them to organization‑level priorities and business outcomes
• Drive engineering excellence across recommendation system codebases by establishing invariants, quality standards, and AI‑native development practices that prevent whole classes of reliability and correctness issues
• Partner with research, product, data science, and infrastructure teams to align on technical strategy, navigate complex trade‑offs, and deliver outcomes that advance Meta's competitive position in personalization
• Mentor engineers across the organization on recommendation system design, debugging complex ranking and retrieval issues, and building systems that scale to billions of users
• Lead cross‑functional initiatives to modernize legacy recommendation infrastructure, including migration projects in complex and mature technical environments
• Serve as a go‑to technical authority for leadership on recommendation systems, producing strategic communications and conceptual frameworks that inform company‑wide investment decisions

Skills

Recommendation systems

System architecture

ML research

Production engineering

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Job description

Summary

Meta is seeking a distinguished engineer to help define the future of recommendation systems that serve billions of people across Facebook, Instagram, Reels, Marketplace, and other Meta surfaces. In this role, you will set the technical direction for large-scale ranking, retrieval, and personalization infrastructure, identifying opportunities to rethink foundational systems from the ground up using AI-native approaches. You will operate at the intersection of machine learning research and production engineering, driving step‑change improvements in how Meta surfaces the most relevant content, connections, and experiences to every person on our platforms.

Required Skills: Software Engineer, Recommendation Systems Responsibilities

1. Define and drive the multi‑year technical vision for recommendation and ranking systems across Meta, influencing architecture decisions that span retrieval, candidate generation, feature engineering, and multi‑objective ranking

2. Identify and solve the hardest scalability and quality challenges in large‑scale recommendation pipelines, including those that cross multiple systems or fall at abstraction boundaries

3. Architect extensible, reliable ranking and personalization infrastructure that serves as a foundational platform for multiple product teams and engineering organizations

4. Develop and apply novel machine learning techniques to recommendation problems, translating research advances into production systems that deliver measurable improvements in user engagement and satisfaction

5. Define new metrics and experimentation frameworks for evaluating long‑term recommendation quality, connecting them to organization‑level priorities and business outcomes

6. Drive engineering excellence across recommendation system codebases by establishing invariants, quality standards, and AI‑native development practices that prevent whole classes of reliability and correctness issues

7. Partner with research, product, data science, and infrastructure teams to align on technical strategy, navigate complex trade‑offs, and deliver outcomes that advance Meta's competitive position in personalization

8. Mentor engineers across the organization on recommendation system design, debugging complex ranking and retrieval issues, and building systems that scale to billions of users

9. Lead cross‑functional initiatives to modernize legacy recommendation infrastructure, including migration projects in complex and mature technical environments

10. Serve as a go‑to technical authority for leadership on recommendation systems, producing strategic communications and conceptual frameworks that inform company‑wide investment decisions

Minimum Qualifications

1. Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, relevant technical field, or equivalent practical experience

2. 12+ years of experience designing, building, and scaling production recommendation, ranking, or personalization systems

3. Experience defining technical strategy and architecture for large‑scale machine learning systems, including retrieval, candidate generation, feature engineering, and multi‑objective ranking

4. Experience leading cross‑organizational engineering initiatives, including driving consensus across multiple teams and influencing technical direction at the organizational level

5. Experience developing and applying machine learning models at scale, from inception through production impact, including experimentation design and metric definition

6. Experience identifying and resolving systemic reliability, performance, or correctness issues across distributed machine learning and data infrastructure

Preferred Qualifications

1. Experience rearchitecting or rebuilding recommendation or ranking systems using AI‑native approaches that delivered order‑of‑magnitude improvements in quality or efficiency

2. Proficiency with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow applied to large‑scale embedding models, two‑tower architectures, or sequential recommendation models

3. Track record of industry‑recognized contributions to recommendation systems, information retrieval, or personalization through publications, patents, or open‑source work

4. Experience building real‑time feature serving, approximate nearest neighbor retrieval, or low‑latency inference infrastructure for recommendation at internet scale

Public Compensation

$271,000/year to $347,000/year + bonus + equity + benefits

Industry

Internet

Equal Opportunity

Meta is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and affirmative action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Meta participates in the E‑Verify program in certain locations, as required by law. Please note that Meta may leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies in connection with applications for employment.

Meta is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance or accommodations due to a disability, please let us know at [e-mail].