Software Engineer 3, Search Backend

eBay•Austin, TX

3d•$98,000 - $173,600•Remote

About The Position

We are looking for a talented mid-level engineer to join the Search Backend team and help us push the boundaries of index distribution. You'll be at the heart of building and operating the distribution pipelines that deliver search indexes to thousands of Search nodes, serving as the critical backbone that keeps eBay's search engine fast, fresh, and reliable. This is a high-stakes, high-impact role where your work is the foundation of a superior Search experience for hundreds of millions of eBay users every day.

Requirements

BS/BA or above in Computer Science or a related field
4 or more years of professional software engineering experience building production applications
Demonstrated ability building backend distributed systems, fault tolerance, consistency, replication, and concurrency
Deep understanding of data structures, algorithms, and the fundamentals of distributed systems
Strong proficiency in Java, Scala, or similar languages
Proven hands-on experience with streaming and data pipeline technologies - Kafka, Spark, Flink, or similar
Experience with cluster coordination tools like Zookeeper
Hands-on experience with container technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes for deploying and managing distributed services at scale
Familiarity with search technologies such as Lucene, Solr, Elasticsearch, or proprietary search engines

Responsibilities

Design and build core components of eBay's search index distribution infrastructure including real-time streaming pipelines that move data with precision and speed across thousands of nodes.
Architect highly scalable, fault-tolerant pipelines that power both real-time and batch index distribution at global scale.
Build intelligent systems for auto-managing index distribution clusters — think self-healing infrastructure with proactive health monitoring, smart alerting, and automated remediation.
Take full ownership of distributed pipeline components from initial design all the way to production, driving quality and reliability at every step.
Write clean, well-documented code that is maintainable, extensible, and ready to scale and built for the long haul.
Work closely with Search Backend, Infrastructure, and partner teams to ensure indexes are fresh, consistent, and delivered on time, every time.
Dive deep into complex distributed system issues debugging and troubleshooting pipeline failures, index delivery anomalies, and performance bottlenecks across a large-scale, multi-pool infrastructure.