Staff Software Engineer, Core Matching & Machine Learning

About the role

Own the technical direction for Bumble’s recommendations platform, evolving the systems that service recommendations for millions of members. Identify the highest-leverage engineering investments across retrieval, ranking, and serving, while balancing relevance, marketplace health, reliability, and latency. Lead the design of large-scale distributed systems that power recommendations across multiple teams and domains.

Responsibilities

• Evolving the systems that service recommendations for millions of members
• Identifying the highest-leverage engineering investments across retrieval, ranking, and serving
• Leading the design of large-scale distributed systems that power recommendations across multiple teams and domains
• From online serving and feature delivery to experimentation and feedback loops, keep them simple, resilient, scalable, and elegant as the platform evolves
• Raising the bar for engineering quality through technical leadership
• Establishing architectural principles, engineering standards, observability practices, and operational excellence that improve the quality and maintainability of systems across the organization
• Multiplying the impact of other engineers by mentoring senior engineers, influencing technical direction across teams, and sharing context and judgment on the organization’s most challenging engineering problems
• Driving platform evolution for the long term
• Leading foundational initiatives such as service decomposition, recommendation infrastructure, experimentation capabilities, developer tooling, and AI-assisted engineering that enable the organization to move faster over time
• Remain deeply technical through hands-on contribution

Requirements

Typically requires 8+ years of building large-scale backend or distributed systems, with experience delivering complex technical initiatives that span multiple teams. Deep expertise in designing and operating high-scale distributed systems, with strong experience in modern languages such as Go, Kotlin, Java, or similar, and a track record of building reliable production platforms. Strong understanding of recommendation systems, ranking architectures, or other large-scale decision systems, including concepts such as retrieval, candidate generation, ranking, feature serving, experimentation, and feedback loops. Experience building cloud-native systems on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or comparable public cloud infrastructure, with deep knowledge of scalability, resilience, observability, and operational excellence. Demonstrated ability to define technical strategy and influence architectural direction across multiple engineering teams through expertise, collaboration, and sound technical judgment rather than organizational authority. Proven experience partnering closely with Product, Data Science, Machine Learning, and Engineering leadership to translate ambiguous business problems into durable technical solutions. A track record of mentoring senior engineers, raising engineering standards, and creating leverage by improving systems, tooling, architecture, and the effectiveness of the wider engineering organization. Strong AI fluency, using modern AI-assisted engineering tools to improve productivity while applying thoughtful human judgment, maintaining high engineering standards, and ensuring member trust remains central to every technical decision.

Qualifications

Deep expertise in designing and operating high-scale distributed systems, with strong experience in modern languages such as Go, Kotlin, Java, or similar, and a track record of building reliable production platforms. Strong understanding of recommendation systems, ranking architectures, or other large-scale decision systems, including concepts such as retrieval, candidate generation, ranking, feature serving, experimentation, and feedback loops. Experience building cloud-native systems on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or comparable public cloud infrastructure, with deep knowledge of scalability, resilience, observability, and operational excellence. Demonstrated ability to define technical strategy and influence architectural direction across multiple engineering teams through expertise, collaboration, and sound technical judgment rather than organizational authority. Proven experience partnering closely with Product, Data Science, Machine Learning, and Engineering leadership to translate ambiguous business problems into durable technical solutions. A track record of mentoring senior engineers, raising engineering standards, and creating leverage by improving systems, tooling, architecture, and the effectiveness of the wider engineering organization. Strong AI fluency, using modern AI-assisted engineering tools to improve productivity while applying thoughtful human judgment, maintaining high engineering standards, and ensuring member trust remains central to every technical decision.

Skills

Strong understanding of recommendation systems, ranking architectures, or other large-scale decision systems, including concepts such as retrieval, candidate generation, ranking, feature serving, experimentation, and feedback loops. Experience building cloud-native systems on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or comparable public cloud infrastructure, with deep knowledge of scalability, resilience, observability, and operational excellence. Demonstrated ability to define technical strategy and influence architectural direction across multiple engineering teams through expertise, collaboration, and sound technical judgment rather than organizational authority. Proven experience partnering closely with Product, Data Science, Machine Learning, and Engineering leadership to translate ambiguous business problems into durable technical solutions. A track record of mentoring senior engineers, raising engineering standards, and creating leverage by improving systems, tooling, architecture, and the effectiveness of the wider engineering organization. Strong AI fluency, using modern AI-assisted engineering tools to improve productivity while applying thoughtful human judgment, maintaining high engineering standards, and ensuring member trust remains central to every technical decision.

Benefits

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).

Pay

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

Schedule

Not specified