MTS , Software Engineer, Backend

About the Team and the Role

The Search Backend team that builds and operates the core services powering eBay Search  build reliable high-performance backend systems that retrieve, rank and serve relevant results for a large global audience of buyers. These systems help users quickly find what they want and enable excellent end‑to‑end shopping experiences. Our work sits at the heart of eBay’s marketplace and directly impacts customer satisfaction, seller success and business growth.

We are also increasingly embracing AI‑driven and AI‑assisted approaches to improve how search systems are built, optimized and evolved for the future.

• Design and deliver backend capabilities that turn shopper intent into optimized search queries and high-quality search results at scale.
• Lead a key operational segment covering architecture development, verification, rollout, supervision and operational excellence in production.
• Develop technical compositions, execution plans and scalable solutions based on product goals and business requirements that balance time‑to‑market with long‑term quality, maintainability and extensibility.
• Partner across multiple engineering, product and applied science teams to define interfaces, evaluate trade‑offs, resolve dependencies and drive measurable improvements in relevance, latency, reliability and developer efficiency.
• Raise the quality and scalability of the team’s systems by driving observability, test automation, resilience and continuous improvement in code architecture and operational practices.
• Proactively identify and address technical debt, design gaps and workflow inefficiencies before they become blockers, helping the team move faster and operate more effectively at scale.

• Robust backend development experience in Java (Java 17 preferred) and production service development with Spring Boot or similar frameworks. Skilled in crafting extensible, maintainable and scalable systems designed for high‑traffic environments.
• 8 years of hands‑on involvement in Java/Spring/Spring‑Boot, REST APIs, messaging systems and/or other backend programming languages.
• An AI‑first attitude with experience or strong interest in leveraging AI‑assisted development and testing tools to accelerate delivery, improve quality and help drive responsible AI workflows across the team.
• Experience owning multiple subsystems or a major functional area across design, implementation, testing, deployment, monitoring and production support in a large modular codebase.
• Proven ability to convert product goals and business requirements into practical technical builds and execution plans. Proficient at designing scalable backend solutions. Makes sound trade‑offs across complexity, performance and long‑term maintainability.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems fundamentals including API design, latency and throughput trade‑offs, resilience patterns, scalability, reliability and observability through metrics, logging and tracing.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to influence technical direction, clarify trade‑offs, align cross‑functional partners and drive execution across teams and dependencies.

• Experience with search and retrieval concepts such as query processing, ranking and sorting, facets and aspects, workflow orchestration systems or relevance experimentation frameworks.
• Solid understanding of GraphQL.
• Experience with Kafka.

eBay is an equal‑opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability, or any other legally protected characteristic. If you have a need that requires accommodation, please contact us. We will make every effort to respond to your request for accommodation as soon as possible.