Backend Software Engineer

About the Role
We are looking for a backend engineer with strong infrastructure fundamentals and a passion for recommender systems to join our Recommendations Backend team. In this role, you'll be responsible for designing, building, deploying, operating and maintaining the backend services and infrastructure that power the user-facing features of our platform.
You'll work closely with ML engineers, product engineers, and data platform teams to ensure our recommendation stack is scalable, reliable, and extensible. This is an ideal role for an engineer who enjoys solving complex distributed systems problems and enabling machine learning systems at scale. What You'll Do

• Design, build, and maintain backend systems and services that support our recommendation engine.
• Build server-side logic and infrastructure of web applications including building and maintaining APIs, databases and other systems that power the user-facing features of our platform.
• Own the full lifecycle of services from design to deployment to monitoring and incident response.
• Work with ML and data engineering teams to integrate models into production safely and reliably.
• Implement real-time and batch processing workflows that ensure timely and relevant recommendations.
• Define and enforce service SLAs and SLOs to ensure system resilience and low latency.
• Participate in design reviews, architecture discussions, and roadmap planning.
• Help shape engineering standards, best practices, and documentation for the infra powering recommendations.

At a Minimum, We'd Like You to Have

• Minimum of 3 years of industry experience building and operating scalable backend systems.
• Experience developing consumer facing features for millions of consumers.
• Strong proficiency in one or more backend languages (e.g., Go, Java, Python, etc).
• Good understanding of Linux and Kubernetes with experience utilizing services from one of the cloud providers such as AWS, Azure or Google.
• Familiarity with data infrastructure concepts like Kafka, Spark, Airflow, or similar.
• Experience designing APIs, data pipelines, or streaming systems in production environments.
• Understanding of how to support ML workflows in production (e.g., feature serving, model rollout, A/B testing infrastructure).
• Strong system design, debugging, and operational excellence mindset.
• A minimum of Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent field.

Ideally, You'll Also Have

• Independence, self-direction and experience owning complete products and features.
• Comfort working on fast paced, data-driven projects.
• Extensive knowledge and experience with large-scale, distributed systems.
• Exposure to model serving tools (e.g., TensorFlow Serving, TorchServe or custom inference services).
• Experience with monitoring platforms such as Pingdom, Grafana, Prometheus, Bosun and TSDB.
• Experience participating in an on-call rotation.

Houzz is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. When applying for a role at Houzz, we guarantee your application will be considered regardless of your sex; race; color; gender; national origin; height or weight; ancestry; physical or mental disability; medical condition; genetic information; marital status; registered domestic partner status; age; sexual orientation; military and veteran status; or any other basis protected by federal, state or local law or ordinance or regulation.
We embrace and celebrate the value that diversity brings to an organization. Diverse backgrounds and different points of view help Houzz provide the best experience for our community. Houzz is committed to fostering an inclusive environment through projects and initiatives, such as employee resource groups, that support Houzzers' efforts to be themselves and share their lives at work.
If you would like assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please email us at [email protected]. This information will be treated as confidential and used only for determining an appropriate accommodation for the interview process.
  Houzz is an Equal Opportunity Employer. M/F/Disability/Veterans __________________
Be Who You Are and Do What You Love at Houzz 
About Houzz When founders Adi and Alon remodeled their home, they were frustrated by the lack of resources and inspiration to help them articulate a vision and select the right pro to make it a reality. 
So they built Houzz. 
Houzz is now the leading platform for home remodeling and design, providing an all-in-one software solution for industry professionals and tools for homeowners to update their homes from start to finish. Using Houzz, people can find ideas and inspiration, hire professionals, and shop for products. Houzz Pro ) provides home industry professionals with a business management and marketing SaaS solution that helps them to win projects, collaborate with clients and teams, and run their business efficiently and profitably. 
Our Mission and Core Values We're proud to say there's no one quite like us. Houzz is a community-centric, innovative tech company that continues to disrupt the home renovation and design industry. Our mission-driven culture is rooted in our core values, and we're all here for one purpose: make the home remodeling and design process more fun and productive for everyone. 
Our Mission To create the best experience for home renovation and design.
Our Core Values We're a Community We put our community of Houzzers, industry professionals and homeowners first. We approach our work with care, humility and respect. We deliver value to our community through our products and services.
We Build the Future We are visionaries who challenge the status quo. We are creative, innovative and curious. We embrace change and different ideas to drive our industry forward. 
We Make Things Happen We are solution-seekers and self-starters. We listen, move fast and empower our teams to deliver extraordinary results and products. We play to win.  
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