Software Engineer (Scala + ML Systems)

Braintrust; United States; Remote; USD 110,000 - 116,000; Full time

Job summary

Etsy is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to build and run its ML orchestration platform. You will enable every ML request—across search, recommendations, ads, and generative AI—to run with high availability and low latency.

The role requires deep experience in distributed systems, Scala or functional languages, Kubernetes operations, and strong collaboration with internal users to shape reliable ML tooling and production workflows.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience building and operating distributed, low-latency production services.
• Experience with Scala or another functional programming language and comfort with functional patterns such as immutability, composition, and effect or concurrency libraries.
• A solid understanding of how ML inference works in production: model serving, feature retrieval, batching, latency and throughput trade-offs, and how predictive and transformer-based models are deployed and evaluated.
• Hands-on experience operating services on Kubernetes, including deployments, scaling, resource management, and debugging in production.
• Experience designing service APIs and request-routing or orchestration systems (e.g., gRPC, queues).
• Strong operational skills: metrics, tracing, alerting, on-call ownership, and performance profiling.
• A product mindset and strong communication skills. You enjoy working with internal users to understand their needs.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate Etsy's ML orchestration platform that handles all ML requests across services such as search, recommendations, ads, and generative AI use cases.
• Develop high-availability, low-latency services and continuously improve reliability and performance.
• Collaborate with Applied Scientists, Data Enablement, model serving, and product engineering to ship features safely and self-service.
• Drive API design, orchestration patterns, and production-grade instrumentation across teams.

Skills

Distributed systems

Scala

Functional programming

Kubernetes

API design

Observability

Communication

ML inference

Tools

gRPC

KServe

Triton

vLLM

Cats Effect

ZIO

Akka

http4s

Job description

• Rate: $80 – $84/hr
• Hours: 40 hours / week
• Experience: 5 - 10 years
• Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA + 3 more

About The Team

• We own the single entry point for ML at Etsy. Our design decisions affect every team that ships a model.
• We treat the platform as a product. Our users are Applied Scientists and Software Engineers, and our goal is to make going from experiment to production safe, fast, and self-service.
• We work closely with Applied Scientists, Data Enablement, model serving and LLM hosting teams, and product engineering partners across Etsy.
• We use generative AI and other productivity tools thoughtfully, with a focus on learning and intentional contribution.

About The Role

We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help build and run Etsy’s ML orchestration platform. Every ML request at Etsy goes through it, including search, recommendations, ads, trust and safety, and generative AI use cases. The platform handles online inference and model evaluation, and it connects product teams to the models, features, and serving infrastructure behind them. This is a high-scale, latency-sensitive, high-availability system, and its reliability directly affects the buyer and seller experience.

Requirements

• 5+ years of software engineering experience building and operating distributed, low-latency production services.
• Experience with Scala or another functional programming language and comfort with functional patterns such as immutability, composition, and effect or concurrency libraries.
• A solid understanding of how ML inference works in production: model serving, feature retrieval, batching, latency and throughput trade-offs, and how predictive and transformer-based models are deployed and evaluated.
• Hands-on experience operating services on Kubernetes, including deployments, scaling, resource management, and debugging in production.
• Experience designing service APIs and request-routing or orchestration systems (e.g., gRPC, queues).
• Strong operational skills: metrics, tracing, alerting, on-call ownership, and performance profiling.
• A product mindset and strong communication skills. You enjoy working with internal users to understand their needs.

Must-Haves

• Back-end engineering experience working on ML systems
• Knowledge of how ML works
• Scala language expertise

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience with cloud infrastructure, ideally GCP.
• Experience with model serving frameworks and LLM inference infrastructure (e.g., vLLM, Triton, KServe).
• Experience with experimentation platforms, feature stores, or online evaluation systems.
• Experience with GPU capacity management and cost optimization.
• Experience with Scala libraries and frameworks such as Cats Effect, ZIO, Akka/Pekko, or http4s.