Staff Software Engineer, Data/ML Platform

About Quizlet:

Inspired by our belief that anyone can learn anything and powered by our own curiosity, we build the smartest tools we can imagine to help students learn.  

Quizlet is the popular, global learning platform and app that millions of students, teachers and everyday people use to study any subject imaginable for school, work or as part of their personal interests -- including two-thirds of high school students and half of all college students in the US. Combining cognitive science and machine learning, Quizlet guides students through adaptive study activities to confidently reach their learning goals.

Valued at $1 billion, Quizlet has raised over $60 million in venture capital from investors including Icon Ventures, Union Square Ventures, General Atlantic, Costanoa Ventures, Owl Ventures, and Altos Ventures.  

To serve our global community of learners, our teams tackle lofty technical challenges and design for use cases across cultures and languages. We work hard, act like owners, and collaborate every chance we get. We’re energized by the potential to power more learners through multiple approaches and various tools.

About the Team:

The Data Services team empowers product engineers and data scientists by developing and operating applications, backend services, tools, and infrastructure to scale Quizlet’s product development both technically and operationally. This includes our machine learning infrastructure, experimentation platform, and event streaming architecture. We tackle longer-term projects on the scale of quarters or more.

We're passionate about quality at scale, performance engineering, high availability, robust distributed architecture, and clean code. We work across Quizlet’s infrastructure, with a variety of systems and tools, and in various programming languages to create the right technological solution for each project.

About the Role:

You will collaborate closely with Machine Learning Engineers, Product Engineers, and Data Scientists to help accelerate the development of intelligent features and enable millions of people to learn on Quizlet. Your work will enhance the scalability and performance of our platform while fostering innovation and efficiency across engineering teams. 

We’re happy to share that this is an onsite position. To help foster team collaboration, we require that employees be in the office at a minimum of three days a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday and as needed by your manager or the company. We believe that this working environment facilitates increased work efficiency, team partnership, and supports growth as an employee and organization.

In this role, you will:

• Own projects end-to-end, from conceptualization to launch and large-scale deployment, leading team members and aligning stakeholders along the way
• Help define and champion the team’s long-term technical vision and roadmap, ensuring it aligns with industry best practices and company goals
• Collaborate with stakeholders to understand requirements and translate them into scalable infrastructure and platform solutions
• Help build, scale, and maintain production services and infrastructure that deliver critical data, ML inferences, and product experiences to students and teachers on quizlet.com
• Accelerate and amplify the work of our Machine Learning Engineers and Product Engineers by building scalable ML infrastructure that streamlines the development, testing, and deployment of machine learning models to production
• Support ML Engineers in productionizing ML models and features with the goal of developing tools and processes that enable self-service
• Develop and implement scalable infrastructure and platform solutions that enable the acquisition, ingestion, and processing of data at scale
• Partner with Product Engineers and Data Scientists to ensure that critical data is delivered to its destination with maximal availability, recoverability, and operational efficiency

What you bring to the table:

• 7+ years of experience as a Software Engineer building and maintaining microservices (particularly in Python, Go), API endpoints, distributed systems, data streaming architectures (Pub/Sub, Kafka), and platform infrastructure (Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform) in Google Cloud Platform (or AWS and Azure)
• Experience identifying areas of opportunity, designing technical solutions to solve those problems, and leading a team to taking a solution from inception to implementation to completion
• Experience working cross functionally with both technical and non-technical teams, translating their business needs to technical problems
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to drive engagement and alignment with stakeholders and senior leaders
• A self-motivating desire to learn new things, try new ideas, and help others grow

Bonus points if you have:

• Experience defining architecture, tooling, and strategy for large-scale distributed systems
• Knowledge and experience building applied ML-based applications are highly preferred

Compensation, Benefits & Perks:

• Quizlet is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Salary transparency helps to mitigate unfair hiring practices when it comes to discrimination and pay gaps.  Total compensation for this role is market competitive, including a starting base salary of $184,000 - $225,000, depending on location and experience, as well as company stock options
• Collaborate with your manager and team to create a healthy work-life balance
• 20 vacation days (and we expect you to take them!)
• Competitive health, dental, and vision insurance (100% employee and 75% dependent PPO, HMO, VSP Choice)
• Employer-sponsored 401k plan with company match
• Access to LinkedIn Learning and other resources to support professional growth
• Paid Family Leave, FSA, HSA, Commuter benefits, Wellness benefits
• 40 hours of annual paid time off to participate in volunteer programs of choice

We strive to make everyone feel comfortable and welcome! 

We work to create a holistic interview process, where both Quizlet and candidates have an opportunity to view what it would be like to work together, in exploring a mutually beneficial partnership.

We provide a transparent setting, that gives a comprehensive view of who we are!  

In Closing:

We hope you are excited about everything you read so far. We highly encourage you to apply for this position, even if you feel you do not meet all the requirements. Quizlet is always looking for amazing folks that believe in our mission and can contribute to our team in various ways - not merely candidates that fit a certain mold.

We have a bias for action, take initiative, and take pride in delivering results. We make informed decisions whenever possible but are unafraid to take calculated risks on great ideas to promote learning. We embrace challenges and see effort as the path to mastery. We’re constantly seeking opportunities to learn and we embrace curiosity. Quality matters at Quizlet, and we hold the bar high on everything we do.

We treat each other with honesty and respect, encourage vigorous debate, and seek critical feedback. We value diversity, humility, transparency, and collaboration as the best paths to our success — as individuals, as a team, and as a company.

Quizlet’s success as an online learning community depends on a strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are actively working to build a team that is representative of the diverse communities we serve, and an open, inclusive work environment where all employees can thrive. As an equal opportunity employer and a tech company committed to societal change, we welcome applicants from all backgrounds. Women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply. Come join us!

To All Recruiters and Placement Agencies:

At this time Quizlet does not accept unsolicited agency resumes and/or profiles. 

Please do not forward unsolicited agency resumes to our website or to any Quizlet employee. Quizlet will not pay fees to any third-party agency or firm nor will it be responsible for any agency fees associated with unsolicited resumes. All unsolicited resumes received will be considered the property of Quizlet.