Software Development Manager, Discovery Services, IMDb Platform Engineering

Lead the engineering team behind search lists and ranking for IMDb the platform hundreds of millions of people use to find movies shows and talent. Youll set the technical direction and build the team as we turn these systems into an AI-powered discovery engine built on IMDbs structured data: titles people credits and the relationships between them.

Own distributed services handling billions of requests across and partner channels.

Drive architecture for intent-based search AI/ML-powered ranking and platform APIs.

Hire and grow the team set engineering standards and own it end to end.

Key job responsibilities
Define technical strategy and architecture: establish the long-term vision for IMDbs discovery systems and drive architectural decisions at scale with intelligent retrieval ML-powered ranking and platform capabilities designed for AI agents and programmatic consumers.

Operate as a platform: publish formal API contracts versioned SLOs and error budgets and deliver self-service integration paths (typed SDKs declarative schema registration) so downstream teams onboard without manual support.

Own the full development life cycle of your teams services and manage complex cross-team projects with significant customer and bottom-line impact.

Partner with product and program managers to develop the strategy and roadmap that deliver discovery capabilities customers use.

Work closely with senior engineers to shape the best technical design and approach for new development and lead design reviews across the organization.

Maintain operational excellence in the monitoring and operation of production services balancing delivery velocity with reliability.

Prioritize plan manage stakeholders and track cross-team commitments.

Hire mentor and retain engineers; own career development and performance management for your direct reports and build a team that can own areas independently without bottlenecking on you.




A day in the life
In a typical week you might review a system design for search ranking changes work with your PM on the list platform roadmap meet with an Amazon team integrating via your SDK run a 1:1 coaching an engineer toward promotion and triage an operational issue in the suggestion search pipeline. Your stakeholders span IMDb Consumer IMDbPro and Amazon teams that consume discovery APIs. You spend roughly half your time on people and half on technical problems.


About the team
The team owns four areas: (1) search and retrieval across and affiliated domains; (2) the list platform growing into a discovery surface with ranking tagging and social features; (3) trust covering correctness moderation and multi-region reliability to published SLOs; and (4) a self-service platform layer that product teams integrate without manual support. Consumers include IMDb Consumer IMDbPro and partner and AI-assistant channels. Were evolving these systems into an AI-native discovery engine built on IMDbs structured entity graph of titles names credits and verified relationships data no competitor has at this depth.

- 3 years of engineering team management experience
- 7 years of working directly within engineering teams experience
- 3 years of designing or architecting (design patterns reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
- 8 years of leading the definition and development of multi tier web services experience
- Knowledge of engineering practices and patterns for the full software/hardware/networks development life cycle including coding standards code reviews source control management build processes testing certification and livesite operations
- Experience partnering with product or program management teams

- Experience in communicating with users other technical teams and senior leadership to collect requirements describe software product features technical designs and product strategy
- Experience in recruiting hiring mentoring/coaching and managing teams of Software Engineers to improve their skills and make them more effective product software engineers

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status disability or other legally protected status.

Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees supervisors and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees supervisors and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal state and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct adverse and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies exercise sound judgment effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism and safeguard business operations and the Companys reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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