Senior Software Engineer (Search & Personalization) in Seattle, Washington at BuyWander

Location: Seattle, WA Type: Full-Time | Engineering

BuyWander is rebuilding the $850B retail returns industry. We take chaotic truckloads of returned goods and transform them into a fast, fun, treasure-hunt shopping experience powered by AI, real-time auctions, and local pickup.

We’re not just building a marketplace. We’re building a daily habit.

We are looking for a highly product-minded Senior Software Engineer to own our Search and Personalization experience.

With the rapid advancement of AI coding agents (like Claude Code and Cursor), the way we build across the stack has completely changed. We aren't hiring you to spend your days writing boilerplate UI components. We are hiring you for your architectural brain and product sense.

Your mandate is to build the discovery engine that keeps our users addicted to the "treasure hunt." You will partner with our Data & AI team to take raw recommendation models and turn them into lightning-fast, highly personalized consumer experiences.

1. The Discovery & Personalization Engine

• Design and implement the architecture for our "For You" feeds.
• Blend rules-based logic with ML-driven recommendations to ensure the right weird, unique, or high-value item hits the exact right bidder at the right time.

2. Search Optimization

• Own our core search infrastructure (Elastic Cloud / Pinecone).
• Implement hybrid search (keyword + vector), tune ranking weights, and build typo-tolerance and synonym matching so our buyers always find what they are looking for.

3. Measuring Success & Experimentation

• You don't just ship features; you measure them. You will design the A/B testing framework for our search ranking changes.
• Track click-through rates (CTR), bid velocity, and conversion metrics to definitively prove your search tweaks are making the company money.

4. AI-Assisted Product Development

• Use modern AI coding tools to rapidly wire your backend search APIs into our Vue/Nuxt frontend.
• Focus your deep thinking on system design, database queries, and user flows, while leveraging AI agents to accelerate UI execution.

At most companies, you are handed a Jira ticket and told exactly what to build. Here, you are handed a business problem: "Our bidders are having trouble finding niche electronics in our chaotic inventory—fix it."

You will have the autonomy to design the search logic, test the algorithms, and ship the product experience that solves that problem. If you love building systems that directly drive user addiction and marketplace revenue, let's talk.

Benefits

• Competitive Salary and Performance-based Bonuses
• Meaningful equity in a company attacking a massive market, for a brand that can become nationally recognized
• Health, Vision & Dental Insurance
• Unlimited PTO
• Annual Company Offsites
• 401K

• The Tech Stack: Deep backend proficiency (we use C#/Python/FastAPI) and a solid understanding of modern frontend frameworks (we use Vue/Nuxt/Vercel).
• Search Expertise: Proven experience tuning search engines (Elasticsearch, Algolia, or OpenSearch) and familiarity with modern Vector databases (Pinecone).
• Product Sense: You think in terms of user psychology and metrics. You understand concepts like collaborative filtering, session-based recommendations, and ranking algorithms.
• The Modern Workflow: You are highly proficient in using AI developer tools (Copilot, Cursor, Claude) to multiply your output.

BuyWander is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We make employment decisions based on qualifications, skills, merit, and business needs. We believe a range of skills, perspectives, and experiences strengthens our team and supports better outcomes for our employees and customers.