Senior Product Backend Engineer - Search (Remote - United Kingdom)

Summary

Yelp engineering culture is driven by our values: we’re a cooperative team that values individual authenticity and encourages creative solutions to problems. All new engineers deploy working code their first week, and we strive to broaden individual impact with support from managers, mentors, and teams. At the end of the day, we’re all about helping our users, growing as engineers, and having fun in a collaborative environment.

At Yelp, we’re dedicated to delivering relevant and delightful search experiences by leveraging cutting-edge techniques in machine learning, data mining, and backend engineering. Our engineers work on key components of the search experience, from developing smart query auto-complete systems to improving search relevance and enriching results with contextual annotations. Their work directly impacts millions of users, helping them discover the best local businesses through a smarter, more intuitive search.

We’re looking for backend engineers to join our Search teams and help build the next generation of the Yelp search experience. This role is ideal for engineers who thrive at the intersection of product and engineering. You’ll work on large-scale, impactful projects and collaborate closely with PMs, ML engineers, and designers — not just translating product requirements into code, but actively shaping product direction with your technical and user-centric insights.

This opportunity requires you to be located in the United Kingdom. We’d love to have you apply, even if you don’t feel you meet every single requirement in this posting. At Yelp, we’re looking for great people, not just those who simply check off all the boxes.

What you'll do:

• Collaborate with product managers and ML engineers to define and iterate on MVPs for new search capabilities.
• Design and build backend systems that power intelligent search features such as contextual annotations, generative query auto-complete, and dynamic SERP structuring.
• Drive product and technical decisions by bringing a strong point of view to user experience, feasibility, and scalability.
• Contribute to the long-term roadmap for next generation Yelp Search.
• Partner with other engineering teams — such as Ads and Core Content — to build cohesive backend systems that support shared product goals.

What it takes to succeed:

• Strong product sense and a track record of working closely with PMs to shape product direction.
• Fluency in an object-oriented programming language (e.g., Python or Java).
• Experience with AWS services, databases (SQL and NoSQL), Unix-based systems, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience with prompt engineering, or a strong interest in learning and applying LLM-based techniques.
• Comfortable with rapid prototyping, experimentation, and iterating based on user feedback and product signals.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to advocate for both user needs and technical feasibility.
• Familiarity with search, ranking systems, or similar problem spaces (e.g., recommendations, NLP, information retrieval) is a plus.

What you'll get:

• Full responsibility for projects from day one, a collaborative team, and a dynamic work environment.
• Competitive salary, a pension scheme, and an optional employee stock purchase plan.
• 25 days paid holiday (rising to 29 with service), plus one floating holiday.
• £150 monthly reimbursement to help cover remote working expenses.
• £81 caregiver reimbursement to support dependent care for families.
• Private health insurance, including dental and vision.
• Flexible working hours and meeting-free Wednesdays.
• Regular 3-day Hackathons, bi-weekly learning groups, and productivity spending to support and encourage your career growth. 
• Opportunities to participate in digital events and conferences.
• £81 per month to use toward qualifying wellness expenses.
• Quarterly team offsites.

Closing

Yelp values diversity. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or family status, veteran status, medical condition, disability, or any other protected status.

Note: Yelp does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to any recruiting alias or employee. Yelp is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.

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