Backend Engineer - Personalization - job 1 of 3

The Personalization team makes deciding what to play next on Spotify easier and more enjoyable for every listener. We seek to understand the world of music, podcasts, and audiobooks better than anyone else so that we can make great recommendations to every individual person and keep the world listening. Every day, hundreds of millions of people all over the world use the products we build which include destinations like “Home” and “Search” as well as original playlists such as “Discover Weekly” and “Daily Mix.”

The Home Podcasts Squad is looking for an experienced Engineer II Backend Engineer to help drive podcast recommendations on the Home Page, Podcast Subfeed, Now Playing View, and other key Spotify distribution surfaces. Home Podcasts is responsible for developing the ranking models that power podcast recommendations across these surfaces, as well as creating other podcast experiences for users on the Home Page, such as topic based shelves and cross-content recommendations.

We are looking for a Backend Engineer II to fill this role. This person is going to be responsible for developing and scaling podcast recommendations across Home. Recommending podcast content across Home and other surfaces is a complex problem, and requires strong collaboration skills across multiple Studios (Core-X, AIFoundations, Sessions, etc.). It also requires an understanding of Home Systems, and the broader recommendations ecosystem at Spotify. We are looking for someone who is curious, has strong analytical skills and good product understanding to help drive our products forward. 

• Collaborate with key internal partners to determine how to scalably design backend systems and APIs
• Architect, develop and operate Java services deployed to millions of users.
• Be a technical leader and valued contributor in an autonomous, cross-functional agile team
• Collaborate with other engineers, product owners, and designers to identify and solve challenging problems, creating awesome podcast listening sessions for users worldwide.
• Be a leader of the Spotify-wide backend developer community affecting and driving our architecture across the company.
• Work on what you want during regular hack days and annual hack weeks.

• You have 3+ years of working experience as a Backend Engineer working with Java. Additional tools and technologies such as gRPC, GCP, BigQuery, and Bigtable are a plus.
• You have experience working directly with stakeholders to understand, document, and develop APIs and systems to meet their requirements, driving increased adoption and reducing reliance on custom one-off implementations.
• You have written distributed, high-volume services and know how to deploy and keep them running in production.
• You have an interest in big data processing technologies.
• You love working in an environment where you constantly experiment and iterate quickly.
• You believe data is the most powerful tool for informed decision-making.
• You have a deep understanding of system design, data structures, and algorithms.

• We offer you the flexibility to work where you work best! For this role, you can be within the North Americas region as long as we have a work location.
• This team operates within the Eastern Standard time zone for collaboration.

The United States base range for this position is $ 125,561 - $ 179,374, plus equity. The benefits available for this position include health insurance, six month paid parental leave, 401(k) retirement plan, a monthly meal allowance, 23 paid days off, 13 paid flexible holidays. These ranges may be modified in the future.

Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens.

At Spotify, we are passionate about inclusivity and making sure our entire recruitment process is accessible to everyone. We have ways to request reasonable accommodations during the interview process and help assist in what you need. If you need accommodations at any stage of the application or interview process, please let us know - we’re here to support you in any way we can.

Spotify transformed music listening forever when we launched in 2008. Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the chance to enjoy and be passionate about these creators. Everything we do is driven by our love for music and podcasting. Today, we are the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service.