Software Development Engineer II, Catalog Discovery (CatDisco)

Zappos is seeking a Senior Software Development Engineer to join our Catalog Discovery team. As a senior engineer you will drive design and implementation decisions that enhance the customer experience making it easier and more fun for customers to find the products they want. You will be responsible for designing and building scalable systems that power our world-class selection of Shoes Kids and Active wear across both platforms.

A key focus of this role will be defining and implementing significant improvements to our Product Listing Pages (PLP) and Product Detail Pages (PDP) for both Zappos and our sister company Shopbop. Youll architect next-generation search and discovery experiences that enhance relevancy filtering capabilities and the overall customer journey. You will also contribute to Zappos systems across the new product lifecycle from buying products capturing product details and generating best-in-class product imagery through innovative technical solutions. This includes developing innovative solutions for faceted navigation personalized product recommendations and unified catalog data models that serve both brands while maintaining their unique identities. Youll leverage technologies including LLM and ML tooling to push the boundaries of whats possible in e-commerce product discovery while ensuring consistent performance at scale.


Key job responsibilities
Design and develop scalable high-performance Java-based applications utilizing AWS services (ECS SQS S3 DynamoDB)
Lead technical initiatives to improve the accuracy and efficiency of our catalog systems
Architect and implement next-generation search and discovery experiences for Product Listing Pages (PLP) across Zappos and Shopbop
Design and build enhanced Product Detail Page (PDP) systems that optimize for conversion customer engagement and cross-selling opportunities
Develop innovative solutions to improve search relevancy faceted navigation and personalized product recommendations
Create unified catalog data models that serve both Zappos and Shopbop while maintaining brand-specific customer experiences
Push technical horizons by implementing technologies including LLM and ML tooling for improved product discovery
Partner with product managers UX designers and business stakeholders to translate ambiguous requirements into elegant technical solutions
Mentor junior developers by providing meaningful feedback and raising the bar on coding standards
Drive architecture and technology choices that enable elegant practical and maintainable code
Work backwards from customer problems to design and implement solutions optimized for speed and scalability
Create technical documentation and decision records to build alignment with senior management and engineering teams
Dive deep with engineering teams to refine requirements and unblock technical challenges


A day in the life
Your morning starts with code reviews and identifying a performance bottleneck in a search feature. You lead a technical design review for an ML-based product categorization system to improve search relevancy across Zappos and Shopbop. After analyzing A/B test results from a recent PDP enhancement you work on integrating LLM capabilities for better product descriptions. Later you collaborate with UX designers on a faceted navigation system for PLPs and document your approach for a unified catalog data model that preserves each brands unique customer experience.

About the team
The Zappos/Shopbop Catalog Discovery team owns the software that drives our photo studio product cataloging product procurement and integration to Amazons marketplace. Were responsible for creating world-class search (PLP) and product detail (PDP) experiences that showcase our products in the most compelling way across both brands. Our systems handle millions of customer interactions daily requiring innovative solutions that balance performance relevancy and user experience.

We use Amazons Leadership Principles and Engineering Expertise but have our own fun vibe. We are in New York Madison and Las Vegas.


- 3 years of non-internship professional software development experience
- 2 years of non-internship design or architecture (design patterns reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
- Experience programming with at least one modern language such as Java C or C# including object-oriented design

- 5 years of programming using a modern programming language such as Java C or C# including object-oriented design experience
- Bachelors degree in computer science or equivalent
- Expertise in Java development with modern frameworks and AWS technologies (DynamoDB ECS SQS SNS S3) plus experience with both relational and non-relational databases

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