Staff Backend Engineer (Coupang Eats Recommendation Platform)

Coupang Eats is Coupang's food delivery service and the fastest-growing delivery service in South Korea. Having burst onto the Korean delivery scene in 2019, Coupang Eats surprised the world once again in 2024 with 'unlimited free delivery.’ This is the result of our relentless efforts to bring the best delivery experience to our customers.   The innovations we've introduced so far are just the beginning. We will never stop working toward a better future so that everyone in the world can experience a better meal. Coupang Eats gives its employees ample opportunities to grow. If you want to grow along with experts in their respective fields, join us now.

 

Role Overview

We're seeking an experienced Software Engineer to join our Eats Recommendation Platform team.

This role offers the opportunity to work on a cutting-edge personalization platform that serves multiple business domains while improving development efficiency, system availability, and user experience. You'll help build a system that unifies various personalization capabilities while maintaining isolation between different business tenants.

 

What You Will Do

• Design and implement components of our next-generation recommendation platform with tenant-level isolation and shared capabilities 

• Develop and optimize recommendation strategies, adopt AI models specifically tailored for hyper-localized food delivery services 

• Build solutions that effectively orchestrate the three critical components (Merchant, Customer, Delivery) in the food delivery ecosystem 

• Create systems that can handle massive data processing and surge traffic periods (lunch/dinner rush hours) 

• Implement real-time personalization features that consider both offline user history and real-time intent signals 

• Develop robust solutions for cold-start problems for both new users and merchants 

• Build and maintain unified index building and feature platforms that improve resource utilization 

• Contribute to the design and implementation of hot deployment capabilities for higher efficiency 

• Implement comprehensive monitoring and high-availability solutions 

 

Qualifications 

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (Master is preferred) 

• 7+ years of professional software development experience, with at least 3 years working on large-scale distributed systems 

• Strong experience with Java and data processing frameworks (Spark, Airflow, etc.) 

• Experience with search technologies like Elasticsearch and geospatial indexing (GeoHash) 

• Solid understanding of recommendation algorithms, including collaborative filtering and modern deep learning approaches 

• Experience with location-based services and geospatial data processing 

• Strong background in distributed systems, microservices architecture, and high-availability design 

• Experience building systems that can handle traffic surges and maintain performance under pressure 

 

Soft Skills 

• Strong problem-solving and analytical thinking 

• Excellent communication skills to collaborate with product, data science, and operations teams 

• Ability to translate business requirements into technical solutions 

• Proactive approach to system improvement and optimization 

• Capability to mentor junior engineers and influence technical decisions 

 

Technical Skills 

• Java programming is fundamental 

• Experienced in multi-thread programming 

• Distributed computing and big data processing 

• Experience with microservices 

• Performance optimization for high-traffic services 

• A/B testing and experiment analysis 

• Recommendation system development (retrieval, ranking, filtering, re-ranking) is a big plus 

• Elasticsearch or similar search technologies is a big plus 

• Knowledge of BCD (Business-Customer-Delivery) collaboration in O2O services is a big plus 

• Machine learning frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, etc.) 

 

Recruitment Process and Others

Recruitment Process  

• Application Review - Phone Interview - Virtual Onsite Interview – Offer  

• The exact nature of the recruitment process may vary according to the specific job and may be changed due to scheduling or other circumstances.  

• Interview schedules and the results will be informed to the applicant via the e-mail address submitted at the application stage.  

Details to Consider  

• This job posting may be closed prior to the stated end date for application if all openings are filled.  

• Coupang has the right to rescind an offer of employment if a candidate is found to have submitted false information as part of the application process.  

• Those eligible for employment protection (recipients of veteran’s benefits, the disabled, etc.) may receive preferential treatment for employment in accordance with applicable laws.  

• Job titles and responsibilities may be subject to change depending on the candidate’s overall experience, etc. This will be communicated to the candidate at the appropriate time before the offer.  

• Hiring may be restricted in case the legal qualifications required for hiring and work performance is not met.
• This is a full-time regular position and includes 12 weeks of probation period; provided, however, the probationary period may be either skipped, shortened or extended if necessary for business purposes. 

 

Privacy Notice  

• Your personal information will be collected and managed by Coupang as stated in the Application Privacy Notice is located below.  

          https://privacy.coupang.com/en/land/jobs/  

 

Document Return Policy

1. This notification is given pursuant to Article 11 (6) of the Fair Hiring Procedure Act.  
2. A job applicant, who has applied but not been finally selected for a position at Coupang (the “Company”), may request the Company to return his/her hiring documents submitted pursuant to the Fair Hiring Procedure Act. However, this will not apply where the hiring documents were submitted via the website of the Company or e-mail, or where the job applicant submitted those documents voluntarily without a request from the Company. In addition, if the hiring documents were destroyed due to a natural disaster or any other reasons not attributable to the Company, such documents will be deemed to have been returned to the job applicant.  
3. A job applicant who wishes to request the return of his/her hiring documents pursuant to the main sentence of paragraph 2 above should fill out a “Request for Return of Hiring Documents” [Annex Form No. 3 in the Enforcement Rule of the Fair Hiring Procedure Act] and submit It by email (recruitingops@coupang.com). In such case, within fourteen (14) days from the date of identifying the receipt of the request, the Company will send the hiring documents to the job applicant’s designated address via registered mail. Please be informed that the job applicant is required to pay the postage on the registered mail.  
4. In preparation for a job applicant’s request for the return of hiring documents pursuant to the main sentence of paragraph 2 above, the Company shall retain the original hiring documents submitted by the job applicant for 180 days from the completion of the recruiting process. If no request is made until the end of this period, all his/her hiring documents will be destroyed immediately in accordance with the Personal Information Protection Act.  
5. The above paragraphs 1 - 4 shall only apply when the labor-related laws of Korea govern the application. They are otherwise not applicable.