Software Development Engineer II, Search Box

Mapbox is the leading real-time location platform for a new generation of location-aware businesses. Mapbox is the only platform that equips organizations with the full set of tools to power the navigation of people, packages, and vehicles everywhere. More than 4 million registered developers have chosen Mapbox because of the platform’s flexibility, security and privacy compliance. Organizations use Mapbox applications, data, SDKs and APIs to create customized and immersive experiences that delight their customers.

POI Search & Relevance team is responsible for building the best general, location-based search engine that empowers the drivers in vehicles, couriers in package delivery and many other people with different use cases that require an intelligent Maps search solution to find places and points of interest as quickly and with fewer keystrokes as possible. We do this by developing groundbreaking algorithms and features, applying the latest cutting edge technologies, and creating cost efficient, scalable solutions that can keep up with the ever changing dynamics of the world in near real-time fashion.

If you are interested in Search, high throughput/low latency architecture, big data analytics and science, machine learning, deep learning and any of the cutting edge technologies that can elevate quality and relevance of our solutions to a higher level, this may be a role for you.

The Search team has direct ownership of Mapbox’s search engine (Search Box) including Query Understanding, POI recall and ranking, and overall ranking and whole page relevancy. We work very closely with our partners, Search Data, Search Evaluation and Search API teams among others, to ensure that we provide the best solution for our customers at all times through cross-team collaboration and open communication.

We have a modern development process - analyzing our initial algorithms, implementing and experimenting as we go, adjusting and optimizing our solutions to ultimately provide the best user experience. We support a production system and, therefore, support outside of standard business hours may occasionally be required to assist with various team and system needs such as pager support for periodic on-call duties, video calls, or other project requirements.

Whatever the use case may be, our customers rely on us to provide the most relevant, location aware suggestions for any given query so, as an algorithm/search engineer on POI Search & Relevance team, your responsibilities may include (but are not limited to):

• Designing and implementing search retrieval algorithms across multiple search engines
• Making existing algorithms more efficient and/or highly performant
• Writing technical design documents and participating in design and code reviews
• Owning the efficiency and accuracy of your designs, as well as being responsible for overseeing your own work through the development and implementation lifecycle, ultimately delivering excellent end results
• Collaborating with other engineers, PMs and teams internationally and cross functionally to deliver a high quality experience to our customers
• Promoting a culture of operational excellence by meticulously testing and monitoring our systems and codes, and being available/on-call to support the health of our services

• Strong understanding of search techniques (such as information retrieval) and data structure
• Practical experience in making an algorithm perform efficiently upon implementation
• Ability to write sophisticated, highly performant, and reliable solutions
• Excellent problem solving skills and analytical skills, valuing a scientific approach by using experimentation and critical thinking to drive and validate high quality solutions
• Experience with at least one modern programming languages such as JAVA, C++, Rust
• Proficiency in implementing monitoring instrumentation, operational diagnostics, resolving customer issues, and continuous product improvement
• Fluent communication in English with a sense for listening to others as well as getting your message across concisely
• Conversational Japanese proficiency
• Familiarity with the Japanese address system

For this position, the following skills would be preferred but are not required:

• Experience with maps, routing, navigation
• Experience with NLP/ML/Generative AI
• Experience with search engines such as ElasticSearch, Solr, Lucene
• Experience with solving challenging search problems
• Experience with big data and scale, data mining and science

• We value high-performing creative individuals who dig into problems and opportunities.
• We believe in individuals being their whole selves at work. We commit to this through supportive health care, parental leave, flexibility for the things that come up in life, and innovating on how we think about supporting our people.
• We emphasize an environment of teaching and learning to equip employees with the tools needed to be successful in their function and the company.
• We strongly believe in the value of growing a diverse team and encourage people of all backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, abilities, and sexual orientations to apply.

We are committed to a fair and equitable hiring process. We do not discriminate against any protected class.