Sr Backend Engineer
About The Position
Taboola is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer for its R&D Team in Downtown Los Angeles. The role contributes to building and improving Taboola’s recommendation infrastructure and backend services for Realize, Taboola’s performance advertising platform, which serves more than 600 million daily active users. The services developed by this team support Taboola’s cookie-less future and influence campaign performance and revenue for publishers and advertisers worldwide. The engineer will design, build, measure, and maintain scalable backend systems and robust data-processing pipelines that handle high-throughput events and large volumes of data. The role involves close collaboration with Product and architecture teams, working in a SCRUM environment, managing integrations from conception through completion, and using AI coding assistants to support prototyping, delivery, and troubleshooting. The engineer will also mentor developers and own production service health, including incident response, root-cause analysis, and ongoing reliability improvements. Collaboration may include early-morning or evening syncs with Taboola’s Tel Aviv team.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s or advanced degree in a relevant field, ideally Computer Science, Engineering, or a similar discipline.
- At least 5 years of hands-on Java coding experience and experience with the Spring Framework.
- Strong understanding of database and search/serving concepts, with experience in relational and NoSQL databases such as MySQL and Cassandra.
- Experience with big data processing and analytics tools such as Apache Spark, Hadoop, or Google BigQuery.
- Experience with containerization and orchestration tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
- Experience with modern version control systems, specifically Git.
- Thorough understanding of backend integration concepts, microservices architecture, RESTful APIs, and event-driven messaging such as Kafka and web services.
- Experience building and scaling real-time search, recommendation, or vector-search pipelines using Vespa or similar technologies such as Elasticsearch or Solr.
- Ability to design scalable, reliable, high-performance systems.
- Experience taking end-to-end ownership of systems and using AI-assisted tools such as Cursor, Claude, or Codex.
- Ability to communicate technical findings clearly and collaborate across teams, including through early-morning or evening syncs with the Tel Aviv team.
- Experience supporting production systems, including on-call rotations, troubleshooting live issues, and driving root-cause fixes.
Nice To Haves
- Experience developing models, algorithms, and infrastructure for large-scale data-mining and machine-learning systems.
- Experience coding in Python.
Responsibilities
- Work with Product teams and architects to identify and implement effective technology solutions.
- Design, code, and manage integration projects from conception to completion in a SCRUM environment.
- Develop scalable backend services and robust data-processing pipelines for high-throughput events and large data volumes.
- Take end-to-end ownership of complex backend systems by designing, building, measuring, and maintaining them.
- Use AI coding assistants for prototyping, feature delivery, and troubleshooting, supported by sound engineering practices and rigorous code review.
- Mentor junior- and mid-level developers.
- Monitor production service performance, respond to incidents, lead root-cause analysis, and improve system reliability.
Benefits
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision benefits.
- 401(k) matching.
- Fully stocked kitchen.
- Parking.
- Hybrid work schedule with three days in the office and the option to come in more often.
- Discretionary bonus.
- Equity.
- Flexible PTO.
- Paid parental leave.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
