Senior Backend (Search) Engineer

SoundCloud empowers artists and fans to connect and share through music. Founded in 2007, SoundCloud is an artist-first platform empowering artists to build and grow their careers by providing them with the most progressive tools, services, and resources. With over 400+ million tracks from 40+ million artists, the future of music is SoundCloud.

We are looking for a Senior Backend/Search Engineer for Soundcloud Search team (part of Music Discovery group), with a mission to help users find and play what they’re looking for and enable them to explore further to discover music that exists nowhere else and connect directly with the artists that make it. You'll play a pivotal role in creating a seamless search experience, and help users connect directly with the artists behind the music. You will collaborate with data scientists, data engineers, and backend/search engineers to deliver high-impact software products.

About the role:

As a Search Engineer, you will be at the forefront of enhancing our search capabilities, directly impacting the experience of millions of users. You will work with our ElasticSearch clusters deployed on Kubernetes, our indexing pipelines written in Scala and Java that process data real-time, our ML pipelines built in Scala and Python and deployed in GCP (Vertex AI and MlFlow), and finally our Value Adding Services. We also leverage technologies such as Spark (Python & Scala), BigQuery, and BigTable to drive innovation in search.

About you:

You have solid experience as a search engineer or in a related role, with a strong focus on designing search systems. You possess a proven ability to optimize query understanding, indexing, and relevance tuning to improve search performance. You have a strong backend engineering background, with experience writing well-documented and testable code, and a deep understanding of distributed, scalable, and accessible system design. Most importantly, you are driven by a passion to make an impact in the world of music discovery.

You are proactive and passionate about learning, with experience collaborating closely with cross-functional teams and working in an Agile environment. You thrive when solving complex engineering problems and enjoy translating these challenges into simple, effective solutions. While you're an independent thinker, you also excel in a close-knit, collaborative team, and are fully committed to delivering high-quality products.

About us: 

• We are a multinational company with offices in the US (New York and Los Angeles), Germany (Berlin), and the UK (London)
• We provide a flexible work culture that offers the opportunity to collaborate and connect in person at our offices as well as accommodating work from home
• We are deeply committed to ensuring diversity, equity and inclusion at all levels of our organization and fostering a community where everyone’s voice, perspective and experience is respected and heard
• We believe a strong team is made by investing in employees through mentorship, workshops and enrichment opportunities

Benefits: 

• Not located in Berlin? No worries, we offer extensive relocation support including allowances, one way flights, temporary accommodation and, by partnering with Expath, on the ground support on arrival 
• Interested in a gym membership, photography course or book? We have a Creativity and Wellness benefit!
• Employee Equity Plan
• Generous professional development allowance
• Flexible vacation and public holiday policy where you can take up to 35 days of PTO annually 
• We offer free German courses at beginning, intermediate and advanced 
• Various snacks, goodies, and 2 free lunches weekly when at the office

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at SoundCloud

SoundCloud is for everyone. Diversity and open expression are fundamental to our organization; they help us lead what’s next in music by understanding and empowering our creators and fans, no matter their identity. We acknowledge the challenges in the music industry, and strive to influence an inclusive culture where everyone can contribute respectfully and thrive, especially the historically marginalized communities that many of our creators, fans and SoundClouders identify with. We are dedicated to creating an inclusive environment at SoundCloud for everyone, regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, migration background, national origin, age, disability status, or care-giver status. 

At SoundCloud you can find your community or elevate your allyship by joining a Diversity Resource Group. Diversity Resource Groups are employee-organized groups focused on supporting and promoting the interests of a particular underrepresented community in order to build a more inclusive culture at SoundCloud. Anyone can join, whether you share the identity or strive to be an ally.