Software Engineer 3, Backend

eBay•Toronto, ON

About The Position

Join the Search Backend team that builds and operates the core services that power eBay Search at scale. We design reliable, high-performance backend systems that retrieve, rank, and serve relevant results for millions of buyers around the world, helping them quickly find what they’re looking for and enabling great end-to-end shopping experiences. Our work sits at the heart of eBay’s marketplace and directly impacts customer satisfaction, seller success, and business growth. We’re looking for a strong Software Engineer 3 to help tackle complex, high-impact technical challenges using cutting-edge technologies, including Generative AI. In this role, you’ll take ownership of key components and features, collaborate closely with partner teams, and play an important role in delivering high-quality solutions end to end. At Search, we pride ourselves on our collaborative, transparent, and inclusive culture, where every voice is valued, and collective growth is celebrated.

Requirements

5+ years of backend software development experience.
Strong Java backend development experience (Java 17+ preferred) and production service development with Spring Boot (or similar frameworks); ability to design extensible, maintainable systems.
AI-first mindset: leverage AI-assisted development and testing tools to accelerate delivery, improve quality, and help the team adopt responsible AI workflows.
Experience working in large codebases and owning a subsystem or small functional area across design, implementation, testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Ability to translate product and design requirements into clean, maintainable, and well-tested backend code, and deliver features independently.
Solid understanding of distributed systems fundamentals: API design, latency/throughput trade‑offs, resilience patterns, and observability (metrics/logging/tracing).
Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to clarify assumptions, estimate work, and contribute to technical discussions and trade-off decisions with cross-functional partners.

Nice To Haves

experience with search/retrieval concepts (query processing, ranking/sorts, facets/aspects), workflow orchestration systems, or relevance experimentation frameworks.

Responsibilities

Design and deliver backend capabilities that turn shopper intent into optimized search queries and high‑quality search results at scale.
Own a subsystem or small functional area, including code quality, observability, and operational excellence in production.
Collaborate with multiple product and engineering teams to define interfaces, diagnose issues, and deliver measurable improvements to relevance, latency, and reliability.
Proactively identify and resolve design/code issues in a large multi‑module system — refactoring workflows and tasks, reducing configuration debt, and documenting technical decisions, implementation details, and operational runbooks.