Senior Staff Ranking Engineer, Personalization

We exist to wow our customers. We know we’re doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, “How did we ever live without Coupang?” Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we’re collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar e-commerce industry from the ground up. We are one of the fastest-growing e-commerce companies that established an unparalleled reputation for being a dominant and reliable force in South Korean commerce. 

We are proud to have the best of both worlds — a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been since our inception. We are all entrepreneurial surrounded by opportunities to drive new initiatives and innovations. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact. At Coupang, you will see yourself, your colleagues, your team, and the company grow every day.  

Our mission to build the future of commerce is real. We push the boundaries of what’s possible to solve problems and break traditional tradeoffs. Join Coupang now to create an epic experience in this always-on, high-tech, and hyper-connected world. 

Role Overview

As a Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer in Search and Discovery, you will leverage the most advanced algorithms to improve Coupang’s product search and discovery quality, including query understanding, product understanding, user understanding, relevance modeling, candidate retrieval, and final stage ranking. You are expected to be a leading expert in one or multiple areas including information retrieval, recommendation systems, machine learning, deep learning or natural language processing. The ideal candidates are pragmatic, resourceful, and embrace challenges that are seemingly impossible. The ideal candidates also have rich industry experience and a track record of delivering highly impactful projects. 

What You Will Do

• Root causes the bottle neck of the current search and recommendation systems and quantifies the defects.  
• Propose solutions which address the search and discovery defects and leverage the state-of-the-art technologies, including ML, DL and large language model. 
• Implement the solutions and conduct AB tests. 
• Be a thought leader and able to gain consensus in the organization when needed. 

 Some example projects include: 

• We use Deep Learning-based conversion prediction model to predict the conversion rate given a query-item pair. Personalization is an important component for conversion prediction. 
• We use two tower models for learning query/item embeddings and use ANN for candidate retrieval. 
• We use BERT-based model to retrieve products, classify queries and extract entities from queries and products’ titles (Named Entity Recognition) 
• We use neural networks to evaluate the relevance of query-item pairs and train such models with millions of human labeled datasets. 
• We use graph algorithms to explore the latent relationships between queries and documents. 

Basic Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in related fields including Search, Information Retrieval, RecSys, ML, DL or NLP. 
• Proficient coding skills in Java, C++ or Python 
• Problem solver, Pragmatic and Open-minded 
• Master Degree in Computer Science or related fields. 
• Experience with handling large data volumes in a distributed environment  

 Preferred Qualifications

• Love to explore new territory of technology and go deep on domain knowledge.  
• Ability to think outside-the-box and challenge conventional wisdoms.  
• A passion to explore, improve, automate and optimize distributed systems and tools.  
• PhD in Computer Science or related Engineering majors  
• Bonus points for experience at ecommerce or social network or search companies 
• Bonus points for large language models and generative AI 

Pay & Benefits   

Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several US geographic markets. At Coupang, your base pay is one part of your total compensation.  

The base pay for this position ranges from $159,000/year in our lowest geographic market to $324,000/year in our highest geographic market. Pay is based on several factors including market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.  

General Description of All Benefits  

• Medical/Dental/Vision/Life, AD&D insurance  
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) & Health Savings Account (HSA)
• Long-term/Short-term Disability
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) program
• 401K Plan with Company Match
• 18-21 days of the Paid Time Off (PTO) a year based on the tenure
• 12 Public Holidays
• Paid Parental leave
• Pre-tax commuter benefits
• MTV - [Free] Electric Car Charging Station  

General Description of Other Compensation  

 “Other Compensation” includes, but is not limited to, bonuses, equity, or other forms of compensation that would be offered to the hired applicant in addition to their established salary range or wage scale.  

 Coupang is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to actual or perceived race (including traits historically associated with race, including but not limited to hair texture and protective hair styles), color, religion, religious creed (including religious dress and grooming practices), sex or gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and medical conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding), gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, ,ancestry, national origin (including language use restrictions), age (40 and over), physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, HIV/AIDS or Hepatitis C status, family status (including but not limited to marital or domestic partnership status), military or veteran status, use of a trained dog guide or service animal, political activities or affiliations, ancestry, citizenship, family and medical leave status, status as a victim of any violent crime, or any other characteristic or class protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. Coupang is also committed to providing a safe work environment for its employees and its consumers.  

If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application of recruiting process due to a disability, please contact us at [email protected].  

Requisition ID: R0044532