Product Backend Engineer (Remote - Canada)

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 is fully remote and does not require you to be located in any particular area in Canada. We welcome applicants from throughout Canada. 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 on 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 generative AI-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).

What you'll get:

• Compensation range is $85,000- $237,000 annually. Depending on your role and level, you may also be offered a bonus, restricted stock units, and benefits.
• This opportunity has the option to be fully remote in all locations across Canada.
• You can find more information about Yelp's five star benefits here!

Closing

At Yelp, we believe that diversity is an expression of all the unique characteristics that make us human: race, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, and education — and those are just a few. We recognize that diverse backgrounds and perspectives strengthen our teams and our product. The foundation of our diversity efforts are closely tied to our core values, which include “Playing Well With Others” and “Authenticity.”

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.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities in our job application process. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at accommodations-recruiting@yelp.com or 1-415-969-8488.

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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