Staff Software Engineer, Intelligent Systems (GIS, AI, Matching and Recommendations)

Bumbleinc; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Insurance: Medical/dental/vision

Unlimited PTO

401k with company match

Parental leave

Wellness benefits

Premium App Access

Job summary

Bumble Inc. is seeking a Staff Software Engineer on the AI & Intelligent Systems team in Austin, Texas. You will shape the technical direction of AI-powered software across Bumble, building and evolving distributed systems and platforms while mentoring engineers and partnering with ML teams.

You will lead design decisions to improve scalability, reliability, and developer productivity, working across teams to deliver high-quality software that enhances member experiences worldwide.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience building and operating production backend systems or distributed software platforms.
• Expert software engineering skills with Kotlin, Go, Python, Java, or similar languages.
• Experience designing scalable, cloud-native systems in production.
• Experience integrating AI or ML capabilities into production software.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, microservices, APIs, data pipelines, and modern software architecture.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and evolution of large-scale distributed systems and backend services.
• Architect and build scalable cloud-native platforms enabling AI-powered product experiences.
• Partner with Machine Learning Engineers to productionize models and build inference services.
• Mentor engineers, drive architectural reviews, and improve engineering practices.

Skills

Kotlin

Go

Python

Java

Distributed systems

Microservices

APIs

Leadership

Architecture

Tools

Kubernetes

AWS

GCP

Docker

Terraform

Job description

At Bumble, we're building a world where healthy relationships thrive, and intelligent software helps millions of people make meaningful connections every day.

As a Staff Software Engineer on our AI & Intelligent Systems team, you'll help shape the technical direction of AI-powered software across Bumble. You'll build and evolve the distributed systems, services, and platforms that enable intelligent product experiences while partnering closely with Machine Learning Engineers, Data Scientists, Product Managers, and fellow Software Engineers.

You'll remain deeply hands-on as you solve complex technical challenges that span multiple teams. Your impact will extend beyond the code you write through architectural leadership, mentorship, and the ability to help teams build scalable, reliable, and maintainable software.

This is an opportunity to work at the intersection of distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, AI-enabled applications, and intelligent product experiences that serve millions of members worldwide.

• Lead the design and evolution of large-scale distributed systems and backend services using Kotlin, Go, and Python.
• Architect and build scalable cloud-native platforms that enable AI-powered product experiences across Bumble.
• Partner closely with Machine Learning Engineers to productionize models, build inference services, and integrate AI capabilities into customer-facing applications.
• Solve complex technical challenges across multiple teams, driving architectural decisions that improve scalability, reliability, performance, and developer productivity.
• Design reusable platform capabilities, APIs, and developer tooling that accelerate engineering teams and improve the quality of software across the organization.
• Build systems that leverage AI, machine learning, and location-aware technologies to create more personalized, intelligent, and context-aware member experiences.
• Contribute to the design and implementation of location-aware experiences using geospatial technologies (GIS), location intelligence, and recommendation & matching systems.
• Establish engineering best practices around system design, testing, observability, operational excellence, and software quality.
• Mentor and coach engineers through technical leadership, architecture reviews, code reviews, and collaborative design discussions.
• Leverage modern AI-assisted engineering tools to prototype, develop, and ship high-quality software while maintaining strong engineering judgment and member trust.

• 8+ years of experience building and operating production backend systems or distributed software platforms.
• Expert software engineering skills using Kotlin, Go, Python, Java, or similar modern backend languages.
• Demonstrated experience designing scalable, resilient, cloud-native systems running in production.
• Experience integrating AI or machine learning capabilities into production software, including model serving, inference services, LLM-powered features, or intelligent automation.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, microservices, APIs, asynchronous messaging, data pipelines, and modern software architecture.
• Proven ability to lead complex technical initiatives that span multiple engineering teams through influence, collaboration, and technical expertise.
• Experience partnering with Product, Machine Learning, Data Science, Infrastructure, and Security teams to translate ambiguous business problems into scalable technical solutions.
• A track record of mentoring engineers, improving engineering practices, and raising the technical bar across an organization.
• Strong AI fluency, using modern AI-assisted engineering tools to improve developer productivity while maintaining thoughtful engineering judgment, high software quality, and member trust.

• Experience building recommendation systems, search platforms, personalization engines, or other intelligent decision systems.
• Experience with geospatial technologies, GIS platforms, routing systems, spatial databases (e.g., PostGIS), mapping APIs, GPS services, or other location-aware applications.
• Experience building platforms or shared infrastructure used by multiple engineering teams.
• Familiarity with experimentation platforms, feature delivery systems, event-driven architectures, or real-time data processing.
• Experience building consumer-facing products at scale.

About Us

Bumble Inc. is the parent company of Bumble Date, BFF, and Badoo. The Bumble platform enables people to build healthy and equitable relationships, through Kind Connections. Founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd in 2014, Bumble was one of the first dating apps built with women at the center and connects people across dating (Bumble Date) and friendship (BFF). BFF is a friendship app where people in all stages of life can meet people nearby and create meaningful platonic connections and community based on shared interests. Badoo, which was founded in 2006, is one of the pioneers of web and mobile dating products.

AI Fluency

AI is important to us. We’re excited by people who are curious and experimental, and who think thoughtfully about how AI can amplify their impact and outcomes.

We encourage you to use AI responsibly as you prepare your application. Please don’t use it to fabricate experiences or answer questions live in interviews. We care deeply about authenticity and want to understand your real skills, judgment and voice, because building a meaningful, genuine connection with you matters to us.

Final Compensation

Will be determined based on factors such as the selected candidate’s qualifications, relevant experience, skill set, and other job-related considerations.

Benefits & Perks

• Insurance: Medical/dental/vision, 30-day eligibility. Bumble has multiple competitive offerings that will be available to you on the first of the month following date of hire.
• Unlimited PTO + 1 company-wide week off + Focus Fridays every week.
• Fully paid life and long-term disability insurance.
• 401k with 4% company match if you contribute 6%, 90-day eligibility.
• Monthly wellness benefit and access to Noom, Unmind, and Your Money Line.
• Maternity and Fertility benefit + 26 week paid parental leave.
• Premium App Access.

Inclusion at Bumble Inc.

Bumble Inc. is an equal opportunity employer and we strongly encourage people of all ages, colour, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and non-binary people, veterans, parents, people with disabilities, and neurodivergent people to apply. We're happy to make any reasonable adjustments that will help you feel more confident throughout the process, please don't hesitate to let us know how we can help.

In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use (For example: she/her, he/him, they/them, etc).

AI in Bumble Inc. Hiring

At Bumble, we may use AI tools to support parts of our recruitment process — such as helping us record, transcribe, and summarize conversations, and supporting job alignment by comparing resumes and job descriptions to highlight skills and potential roles that may be a good match. These tools help us work more efficiently and stay focused on you during our conversations. Importantly, all hiring decisions are made by people. AI is used only to support our team’s efficiency and improve the candidate experience — not to evaluate or decide on your candidacy. Participation in AI-supported interviews and conversations is completely voluntary and will not impact your candidacy. If you’d prefer to opt out, simply let your recruiter or interviewer know at the start of a call, or anytime during the interview or conversation. Summaries and related data are retained only as long as needed in line with our internal data retention policies. If at any point you’d like a transcription or summary deleted, please contact your recruiter directly.

For further information on how we hold and manage your data, please refer to our Privacy Policy.