Staff Software Engineer - Search and Listings

Compass Real Estate - Peninsula; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity incentives

Comprehensive benefits

Paid vacation & parental leave

401(k) plan

Commuter program

Life and disability insurance

Fertility benefits

Pet insurance

Job summary

Compass seeks a Staff Software Engineer for the Search & Listings org to own platform architecture and data ingestion, building scalable search and listing pipelines with microservices. You will lead a team to deliver high-impact features, drive API design, and mentor engineers in a fast-moving environment.

You will collaborate with product and business teams, advocate best practices, and implement modern patterns including AI-enabled workflows, while focusing on reliability and performance at

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience building high-performance software applications in Java or Go.
• 5+ years leading cross-team technical initiatives and architecture.
• Experience with AWS and cloud-native, distributed systems.
• Strong communication skills and ability to influence product decisions.
• Proven track record of delivering scalable APIs and services.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and development of search infrastructure and listing pipelines.
• Own API surfaces, data ingestion, normalization, and services integration.
• Mentor engineers, drive architectural improvements, and reduce tech debt.
• Define reliability KPIs and oversee CI/CD, monitoring, and testing.

Skills

Java

Go

gRPC

Thrift

Kafka

AWS

Leadership

Education

BS in Computer Science or equivalent

Tools

AWS

Kafka

Job description

At Compass, our mission is to help everyone find their place in the world. Founded in 2012, we’re revolutionizing the real estate industry with our end-to-end platform that empowers residential real estate agents to deliver exceptional service to seller and buyer clients.

At Compass, our mission is to help everyone find their place in the world. Founded in 2012, we’re revolutionizing the real estate industry with our cloud-based end-to-end platform that empowers residential real estate agents to deliver exceptional service to seller and buyer clients.

As a Staff Software Engineer in the Search & Listings (SNL) organization, you will use your experience with microservices based architecture to build products that deliver high business impact for our customers. You will lead the design and development of search infrastructure, listing pipelines, enrichment services, and feed integrations to support an industry leading consumer experience while also supporting the growth of the world’s most scalable brokerage. You will lead a team to build products that drive discovery and inventory management, such as agent/consumer search, geospatial services, or property data mastering, leveraging data platforms and real-time syndication to power a world-class real estate discovery experience.

You are an engineer who is passionate about creating well-defined APIs that are easy to use. You feel it is critical that your voice is heard in product and business decisions. You love to learn, and equally love to share your knowledge with others. You are a great communicator and you take care to understand before making yourself understood.

Your design systems are fault tolerant, scalable, highly available, well-tested, eventually consistent, and follow best practices such as the single responsibility principle.

Your code is designed for modularity and re-use. You take pride in delivering solid code that is well-tested, peer-reviewed, and follows best practices. You have strong opinions on code structure, style, and development processes.

As Compass, You Will

• Provide strategic direction and ownership of platform architecture, data ingestion and normalization, to deliver an industry leading search experience at scale.
• Independently define and lead the delivery of complex technical projects across the entire stack.
• Champion a culture of operational excellence by defining reliability KPIs, establishing accountability for service health, and leading architectural improvements that proactively reduce technical debt, manual toil, and infrastructure costs.
• Adopt and operationalize modern and emerging software patterns, including integrating AI, data pipelines, and telemetry systems to automate workflows
• Operate in a scalable engineering culture that leverages modern principles of AI assisted workflows, decoupled systems, and automated CI/CD/testing/monitoring to drive efficiencies
• Inspire, recruit, and mentor fellow engineers.
• Join a great team with a lot of visibility and some challenging projects on the horizon

What We Look For

• Education: BS in Computer Science, Software Engineering or equivalent practical experience
• Experience: 10+ years of experience developing comprehensive, well-tested, and high-performance software applications in languages such as Java or Go and technology such as gRPC, Thrift, and other server-to-server communication protocols , Kafka and event-driven systems.
• 5+ years using AWS / cloud technologies.
• A track record as a technical leader with cross-team impact.
• Understanding and adherence to industry-standard best practices in software development and architecture while keeping abreast of evolving technologies in AI
• Experience with Scrum/Agile development methodologies
• Strong critical thinking skills, great communication skills
• Excellent verbal and written English communication skills

Perks That You Need To Know About

• Participation in our incentive programs (which may include eligible cash, equity, or commissions). Plus paid vacation, holidays, sick time, parental leave, and recharge leave; medical, tele-health, dental and vision benefits; 401(k) plan; flexible spending accounts (FSAs); commuter program; life and disability insurance; Maven (a support system for new parents); Carrot (fertility benefits); UrbanSitter (caregiver referral network); Employee Assistance Program; and pet insurance.

Do your best work, be your authentic self.

At Compass, we believe that everyone deserves to find their place in the world — a place where they feel like they belong, where they can be their authentic selves, where they can thrive. Our collaborative, energetic culture is grounded in our Compass Entrepreneurship Principles and our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, growth and mobility. As an equal opportunity employer, we offer competitive compensation packages, robust benefits and professional growth opportunities aimed at helping to improve our employees' lives and careers.

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