Backend Engineer II, Location Platforms

It takes powerful technology to connect our brands and partners with an audience of hundreds of millions of people. Whether you’re looking to write mobile app code, engineer the servers behind our massive ad tech stacks, or develop algorithms to help us process trillions of data points a day, what you do here will have a huge impact on our business—and the world.

A Little About Us  

The Location Platforms team enables Yahoo products to understand where users and entities are in the world. We build and operate high-scale services for reverse geocoding, location signal processing, IP geolocation, POI search, and real-time location inference — serving billions of requests daily across Yahoo's product ecosystem.

Responsibilities

• Develop, test, and deploy production-ready code for location services, working on well-defined features and bug fixes within existing location APIs and data pipelines.

• Implement solutions against technical designs established by senior engineers and architects, delivering with limited day-to-day guidance.

• Use Yahoo-approved AI development tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or Cursor) to accelerate implementation, testing, debugging, and documentation.

• Write comprehensive unit and functional tests, and refactor existing code to improve reliability, performance, and maintainability.

• Troubleshoot software failures and operational issues across distributed Linux, public cloud (AWS/GCP), and on-premise Hadoop environments, conducting root-cause analysis to prevent recurrence.

• Participate in an on-call rotation for services handling billions of requests daily, responding to incidents and driving follow-up fixes.

• Participate actively in code reviews, design reviews, technical planning, and agile story estimation — asking clarifying questions and proactively surfacing risks.

• Contribute to team metrics dashboards, documentation, and operational standards, and adhere to team coding and documentation practices.

Basic Qualifications

• BS or MS in Computer Science or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

• 2+ years of hands-on software development experience building scalable applications or platform services.

• Proficiency in Java, with solid grounding in object-oriented design.

• Working knowledge of big data systems (Spark, Hive, Hadoop) and cloud platforms such as AWS or GCP; Python or Scala for data processing at scale.

• Working experience in UNIX/Linux environments.

• Hands-on experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or Cursor) in day-to-day engineering work, and a willingness to adopt LLM-based workflows to improve engineering velocity.

• Understanding of web service APIs and RESTful design.

• Experience working with large datasets and batch or streaming data pipelines.

• Strong oral and written communication skills, with a collaborative, customer-first approach and openness to feedback.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with real-time and streaming systems (Kafka, Flink, or similar) for high-volume signal processing.

• Experience building and operating containerized services on Kubernetes and Docker.

• Familiarity with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, Ansible) and automated CI/CD pipeline design and maintenance.

• Awareness of privacy and consent requirements for handling user location data (GDPR, CCPA, or similar frameworks).

• Exposure to machine learning concepts and their application to location inference or signal quality.

• Interest or experience applying AI tooling — custom prompts, agents, or automated workflows — to engineering problems such as data quality, pipeline debugging, or developer productivity.

• Any exposure to geospatial or location data is a nice-to-have, not a requirement — map data, geocoding, IP geolocation, spatial indexing, POI/place data, or trajectory processing. We're glad to teach the domain to strong backend engineers.

The material job duties and responsibilities of this role include those listed above as well as adhering to Yahoo policies; exercising sound judgment; working effectively, safely and inclusively with others; exhibiting trustworthiness and meeting expectations; and safeguarding business operations and brand integrity.

At Yahoo, we offer flexible hybrid work options that our employees love! While most roles don’t require regular office attendance, you may occasionally be asked to attend in-person events or team sessions. You’ll always get notice to make arrangements. Your recruiter will let you know if a specific job requires regular attendance at a Yahoo office or facility. If you have any questions about how this applies to the role, just ask the recruiter!

Yahoo is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, and will not be discriminated against based on age, race, gender, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or any other protected category. Yahoo will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law. Yahoo is dedicated to providing an accessible environment for all candidates during the application process and for employees during their employment. If you need accessibility assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability, please submit a request via the Accommodation Request Form (www.yahooinc.com/careers/contact-us.html) or call +1.866.772.3182. Requests and calls received for non-disability related issues, such as following up on an application, will not receive a response.

We believe that a diverse and inclusive workplace strengthens Yahoo and deepens our relationships. When you support everyone to be their best selves, they spark discovery, innovation and creativity. Among other efforts, our 11 employee resource groups (ERGs) enhance a culture of belonging with programs, events and fellowship that help educate, support and create a workplace where all feel welcome.

The compensation for this position ranges from $111,000.00 - $231,250.00/yr and will vary depending on factors such as your location, skills and experience.The compensation package may also include incentive compensation opportunities in the form of discretionary annual bonus or commissions. Our comprehensive benefits include healthcare, a great 401k, backup childcare, education stipends and much (much) more.

Currently work for Yahoo? Please apply on our internal career site.