Senior Backend Engineer, SoundCloud
Search
+ Employee Stock Ownership Plan
More information about location
Next-generation music entertainment ecosystem
Be an early applicant
Next-generation music entertainment ecosystem
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
+ Employee Stock Ownership Plan
More information about location
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To empower the world's audio creators with the best tools, services and resources to build and grow their careers.
Role
Who you are
- You have solid experience as a search engineer or in a related role, with a strong focus on designing search systems
- You possess a proven ability to optimize query understanding, indexing, and relevance tuning to improve search performance
- You have a strong backend engineering background, with experience writing well-documented and testable code, and a deep understanding of distributed, scalable, and accessible system design
- Most importantly, you are driven by a passion to make an impact in the world of music discovery
- You are proactive and passionate about learning, with experience collaborating closely with cross-functional teams and working in an Agile environment
- You thrive when solving complex engineering problems and enjoy translating these challenges into simple, effective solutions
- While you're an independent thinker, you also excel in a close-knit, collaborative team, and are fully committed to delivering high-quality products
What the job involves
- We are looking for a Senior Backend/Search Engineer for Soundcloud Search team (part of Music Discovery group), with a mission to help users find and play what they’re looking for and enable them to explore further to discover music that exists nowhere else and connect directly with the artists that make it
- You'll play a pivotal role in creating a seamless search experience, and help users connect directly with the artists behind the music
- You will collaborate with data scientists, data engineers, and backend/search engineers to deliver high-impact software products
- As a Search Engineer, you will be at the forefront of enhancing our search capabilities, directly impacting the experience of millions of users
- You will work with our ElasticSearch clusters deployed on Kubernetes, our indexing pipelines written in Scala and Java that process data real-time, our ML pipelines built in Scala and Python and deployed in GCP (Vertex AI and MlFlow), and finally our Value Adding Services
- We also leverage technologies such as Spark (Python & Scala), BigQuery, and BigTable to drive innovation in search
Our take
Founded in 2007, SoundCloud saw the need for an artist-first platform. They set out to empower independent artists and equip them with the necessary tools and resources to build and grow their careers.
SoundCloud has over 40 million artists on the platform (in comparison to Spotify's 11 million), making them the biggest audio discovery platform in a large and growing market. According to Midia Research, the independent artist market is bound to see unhindered revenue growth for the next few years.
The company plans to scale up its audience and expand its services through new offerings such as the SoundCloud "roster". This is a tier system that provides significant creative and financial resources, as well as financial and marketing support to artists (essentially rivaling large-scale record companies). While artists will maintain ownership of their copyrights they are to be represented by SoundCloud.
SoundCloud's expansion into new markets and regions is still full steam ahead. Through acquisitions, partnerships and even better product offerings, SoundCloud is bent on cementing its standing as every creator's springboard.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Some candidates hear
back within 2 weeks
3% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Feb 2020
$75m
SERIES G
Aug 2017
$170m
SERIES F
Total funding: $459.3m
Company benefits
- Comprehensive health benefits including medical, dental, and vision plans, as well as mental health resources
- Employee Stock Ownership Plan
- Generous professional development allowance
- Interested in a gym membership, photography course or book? We have a Creativity and Wellness benefit!
- Flexible vacation and public holiday policy where you can take up to 35 days of PTO annually
- 16 paid weeks for all parents (birthing and non-birthing), regardless of gender, to welcome newborns, adopted and foster children
- Various snacks, goodies, and 2 free lunches weekly when at the office
Company HQ
Mitte, Berlin, BE
Articles
Leadership
Alexander Ljung
(Chairman)Served as CEO of SoundCloud for 10 years, becoming Chairman in 2017. Has gone onto co-found Dance.
Salary benchmarks
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