Staff Engineer, Search Relevance

Maps are no longer static. Our maps represent the ever-evolving world, accessing, aggregating, and adapting anonymous data from millions of sensors and phones in real-time. Mapbox has the exciting opportunity to power devices and products across the next frontier in location-based data and services, such as the Internet of Things and AR/VR.

Whether you’re watching the delivery of your grocery order on Instacart, looking at a gym on ClassPass, sending snaps on Snap, tracking your personal best on Strava, monitoring your gas budget on Metromile, or checking today’s forecast on The Weather Channel, Mapbox is the location and maps within those apps. We’re changing how people move by mapping the world in real-time. We are the developer platform for location.

What We Do

The Ranking & Relevance team owns query understanding, information retrieval, and Search quality end to end.  Working across multiple search engines and an aggregation layer, this team is responsible for delivering the best search experience possible.  We make it possible to search for an exact street address in dozens of countries, with precise accuracy. We operate our Search API and infrastructure, which powers billions of search requests from thousands of customers and hundreds of millions of end-users every month.

We work on the development of our address, places, POI, and category search engines, which involves spatial information retrieval challenges, development of high performance and low latency search algorithms, and world geography and language problems.

What You’ll Do

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Search Relevance team, you’ll be responsible for, and expected to:

• Design & implement search retrieval algorithms across multiple search engines
• Develop search algorithms for search the worlds locations
• Write, debate, and implement technical design documents through the search organization
• Work across teams to improve Search and Mapbox holistically
• Mentor other Search Relevance engineers

What We Believe are Important Traits for This Role

• Experience in modern programming languages (JS, Rust, C++, Go, Java)
• Experience with search at scale (billions of requests per month)
• Proficiency in implementing monitoring instrumentation, operational diagnostics, resolving customer issues, and continuous product improvement.
• Experience in solving challenging search problems.
• A desire to work with individuals with diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences.
• Enthusiasm for learning and knowledge sharing in a multidisciplinary environment, supported by mentorship experience and strong written and verbal communication skills.
• A rigorous approach to problem solving, using experiments and data analysis to drive quality of service improvements.
• Experience with search engines such as ElasticSearch, Solr, Lucene

What We Value

In addition to our core values, which are not unique to this position and are necessary for Mapbox leaders:

• We value high-performing creative individuals who dig into problems and opportunities.
• We believe in individuals being their whole selves at work. We commit to this through supportive health care, parental leave, flexibility for the things that come up in life, and innovating on how we think about supporting our people.
• We emphasize an environment of teaching and learning to equip employees with the tools needed to be successful in their function and the company.
• We strongly believe in the value of growing a diverse team and encourage people of all backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, abilities, and sexual orientations to apply.

By applying for this position, you acknowledge that you have received the Mapbox Non-US Privacy Notice for applicants, which is linked here.  Completing this application requires you to provide personal data, such as your name and contact information, which is mandatory for Mapbox to process your application. 

Mapbox is an EEO Employer - Minority/Female/Veteran/Disabled/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity