Principal Engineer, Indexing & Retrieval Infrastructure

What you'll do

• Define and drive the long-term technical vision for indexing and retrieval infrastructure across Core, Ads, and Shopping.
• Lead cross-org initiatives to modernize architecture by developing unified real-time and incremental retrieval systems.
• Partner with engineering, product, and ML leaders to align priorities and deliver shared platform capabilities.
• Raise the technical bar through system design, architecture reviews, and execution on complex infrastructure changes.
• Build shared tools for common metrics, tuning surfaces, and debugging workflows to balance performance and cost.
• Mentor senior engineers and technical leaders to foster high standards for engineering judgment and operational excellence.
• Utilize AI tools to accelerate analysis, prototyping, and the creation of design artifacts.

What we're looking for

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent experience.
• Deep expertise building large-scale indexing, search, recommendation, or ads retrieval systems including real-time and incremental architectures.
• Strong technical leadership experience influencing direction and aligning stakeholders across multiple teams or organizations.
• Proven ability to lead large modernization efforts such as architectural convergence and migration from legacy systems at scale.
• Exceptional systems thinking to connect platform design decisions to product quality, ML needs, and business outcomes.
• Strong communication skills to distill complex technical topics for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated experience using AI to improve engineering workflows including analysis, prototyping, and documentation.
• Proven ability to critically evaluate and validate AI-assisted work through testing and sound engineering judgment.