Backend Engineer, Ranking Team (Machine Learning)

About SmartNews

News should be for everyone. But not when it’s buried under cat videos—or when your internet is spotty—or when it’s in a filter bubble. That’s why we created SmartNews.

Our mission is to discover and deliver quality stories to the world. To accomplish this:

We are a machine learning company. News should be impartial, trending and trustworthy. Our algorithms evaluate millions of articles, social signals and human interactions to deliver the top 0.01% of stories that matter most, right now.

We love content. News should be sustainable. We support quality journalism and respect publishers by sharing article traffic and revenue.

Please note that we will only consider you for one application at a time.

Position

About our Engineering Culture

Our global teams of engineers come from a variety of professional backgrounds, from large, well-established companies to small ventures. We believe that employees with diverse skill sets and life experience make for strong, cohesive teams.

Visit the People page on our careers site to read interviews of our engineering leaders!

Roles of Our Engineering Teams

Ads Ranking

Build high-quality, relevant, profitable advertisement platforms

News Ranking

Build news ranking systems to improve users' "Personal Discovery" experience

Backend Engineer Responsibilities

• Plan and execute engineering development of robust and scalable backend systems to enable state-of-the-art core ranking systems for millions of users
• Support the maintenance and the stability of the components of those ranking systems
• Collaborate closely with machine learning engineers and algorithm engineers to develop backend systems, including contributing to machine learning models and algorithms
• Work closely with global cross-functional teams (Product Managers, Product Specialist, Product Designers, Data Scientists, etc.) to develop backend systems for new ads and news related product features
• Proactively contribute to system improvements that result in direct user impact through innovation and creative thinking

Your qualification

• 3+ years of experience in building distributed, highly scalable systems supporting millions of users, including design, coding, and evaluation/testing (Java, Kotlin, Scala, Python, Golang)
• Strong educational background in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Mathematics, Physics or related technical fields
• Business-level ability in English or Japanese

Will be a plus

• Failure analysis and performance tuning in JVM operation
• Familiarity with tech stack such as AWS, Spring-Boot, Elasticsearch, Kafka, Flink, Github, MySQL, Hadoop, Hive, Spark, Docker, Kubernetes, and/or TensorFlow
• Experience in internet, web, ads, and/or technology industries
• Passion and interest towards solving world problems such as digital divide, filter bubbles, echo chambers, group polarization, etc.
• Basic understanding or experience developing machine learning, artificial intelligence, ranking, recommendation, or search systems
• Business Japanese

What we offer

• Support program for employee’s self-development and well-being
• Healthy lunches are prepared on-site daily in our SmartKitchen, located in our West Office building. You can even see the cooks at work!
• Need a pick-me-up? Stop by ChikyuCoffee, our in-house coffee shop located in both the East and West Office buildings, and get a cup of gourmet coffee, espresso-based beverage, or other seasonal drink!
• SmartNews provides all healthcare and social insurance benefits required by Japanese labor law

Visa Sponsorship and Relocation Support

For candidates who meet eligibility requirements, SmartNews can sponsor visas.

To support a smooth transition for candidates who are moving to Japan from overseas, SmartNews partners with a travel service provider.