Machine Learning Engineer - Search

Back

Machine Learning Engineer - Search

• Remote - Americas
• Engineering & Data

About the role

Every day, millions of people search for products across Shopify's ecosystem. That's not just queries—that's dreams, businesses, and livelihoods riding on whether someone finds the perfect vintage jacket or the exact drill bit they need. As a Machine Learning Engineer specializing in Search Recommendations, you'll be the one making that magic happen. With a search index unifying over a billion products, you're tackling one of the hardest search problems at unprecedented scale. We're building cutting-edge product search from the ground up using the latest LLM advances and vector matching technologies to create search experiences that truly understand what people are looking for.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and implement AI-powered features to enhance search recommendations and personalization
• Collaborate with data scientists and engineers to productionize data products through rigorous experimentation and metrics analysis
• Build and maintain robust, scalable data pipelines for search and recommendation systems
• Develop comprehensive tools for evaluation and relevance engineering, following high-quality software engineering practices
• Mentor engineers and data scientists while fostering a culture of innovation and technical excellence

Qualifications

• Expertise in relevance engineering and recommendation systems, with hands-on experience in Elasticsearch, Solr, or vector databases
• Strong proficiency in Python with solid object-oriented programming skills
• Proven ability to write optimized, low-latency code for high-performance systems
• Experience deploying machine learning, NLP, or generative AI products at scale (strong plus)
• Familiarity with statistical methods and exposure to Ruby, Rails, or Rust (advantageous)
• Track record of shipping ML solutions that real users depend on

Ready to make search more magical? Join the team that's making commerce better for everyone. At Shopify, we pride ourselves on moving quickly—not just in shipping, but in our hiring process as well. If you're ready to apply, please be prepared to interview with us within the week. Our goal is to complete the entire interview loop within 30 days. You will be expected to complete a live pair programming session, come prepared with your own IDE. This role may require on-call work

About Shopify

Opportunity is not evenly distributed. Shopify puts independence within reach for anyone with a dream to start a business. We propel entrepreneurs and enterprises to scale the heights of their potential. Since 2006, we’ve grown to over 8,300 employees and generated over $1 trillion in sales for millions of merchants in 175 countries.

This is life-defining work that directly impacts people’s lives as much as it transforms your own. This is putting the power of the few in the hands of the many, is a future with more voices rather than fewer, and is creating more choices instead of an elite option.

About you

Moving at our pace brings a lot of change, complexity, and ambiguity—and a little bit of chaos. Shopifolk thrive on that and are comfortable being uncomfortable. That means Shopify is not the right place for everyone.

Before you apply, consider if you can

• Care deeply about what you do and about making commerce better for everyone
• Excel by seeking professional and personal hypergrowth
• Keep up with an unrelenting pace (the week, not the quarter)
• Be resilient and resourceful in face of ambiguity and thrive on (rather than endure) change
• Bring critical thought and opinion
• Put AI agents and tools to work on the tasks they're built for, and focus on the work only humans can do
• Embrace differences and disagreement to get shit done and move forward
• Work digital-first for your daily work

We may use AI-enabled tools to screen, select, and assess applications. All AI outputs are reviewed and validated by our recruitment team.

Shopifyhttps://www.shopify.com

We hire people, not resumes. If you think you’re right for the role, apply now