Senior Software Development Engineer, IMDb Discovery Services

Design and build the search ranking and list systems behind IMDb - the platform hundreds of millions of people use to find movies shows and talent. As a senior engineer youll own the architecture for core areas of discovery and lead the work to turn these systems into an AI-powered discovery engine built on IMDbs structured data: titles people credits and the relationships between them.

- Own distributed services handling billions of requests across and partner channels
- Lead development and strategy of key system features on IMDbs Discovery platforms driving intent-based search and AI/ML-powered ranking
- Set engineering standards mentor engineers and own your services end to end in production

IMDb is the worlds most popular source for information on movies TV shows and celebrities. IMDb Discovery Services builds the search list and ranking platform that helps hundreds of millions of customers find explore and connect with the titles and talent they care about. We own real-time suggestion search across and affiliated domains; main and advanced search; charts and discovery widgets; the user list platform; and the ranking systems behind STARmeter MOVIEmeter and TVmeter. These services handle billions of requests and sit at the heart of the IMDb experience powering IMDb Consumer IMDbPro and a growing set of partner and AI-assistant channels.

Were evolving this platform into an AI-native discovery engine: intelligent retrieval that understands intent lists that surface as a discovery experience rather than personal storage and self-service integration so downstream teams onboard through typed SDKs and versioned contracts. Our search stack is built on AWS OpenSearch Service and relevance latency and scale are first-class engineering concerns. Every generative and agentic experience is grounded in IMDbs structured entity graph of titles names credits and verified relationships data no competitor has at this depth.

As a Senior Software Development Engineer (SDE) on this team youll own architecture for one or more of these areas lead multi-engineer efforts where the customer problem is clear but the technical strategy is not and set the engineering standard others build to. The work sits at the intersection of large-scale distributed systems information retrieval and machine learning and a uniquely valuable data set.


Key job responsibilities
- Lead the development and technical strategy of key system features for IMDbs search platform on AWS OpenSearch Service - index design relevance tuning query performance and scaling.
- Own the architecture for a significant area of the discovery platform (search/retrieval ranking or the list platform) providing a system-wide view and design guidance across the team.
- Lead the design and delivery of complex multi-engineer projects end to end - scoping design implementation testing deployment and operations - breaking work into parallel streams and integrating it into a coherent whole.
- Build intelligent retrieval and ML-powered ranking plus platform capabilities (API contracts versioned SLOs typed SDKs) for downstream and AI-agent consumers.
- Raise the operational bar: own alarms telemetry runbooks and COE practices balancing velocity against reliability on the critical path.
- Review designs and code across the team to ensure solutions are well-designed extensible performant and secure; drive adoption of engineering best practices.
- Identify and resolve architecture deficiencies and systemic operational issues including those where the platform bottlenecks other teams innovation.
- Mentor engineers and partner with product and program management to shape the discovery roadmap.
- Contribute to AI-native platform practices - steering files structured knowledge and agent-readable interfaces for your codebases.

A day in the life
You might open the day reviewing a ranking-signal design and a teammates pull request then spend the morning on a thorny retrieval problem - tuning OpenSearch analyzers and query structure so intent resolves against the entity graph. After lunch you meet a partner team onboarding to your search SDK and refine the contract then write code on the critical path. You close by triaging a signal from the suggestion-search pipeline and updating a runbook. The role moves between deep engineering design leadership and operational ownership - often in the same day.

About the team
We own four areas: (1) search and retrieval across IMDb and affiliated domains; (2) the list platform growing into a discovery surface with ranking tagging and social features; (3) trust - correctness moderation and multi-region reliability to published SLOs; and (4) a self-service platform layer that product teams integrate without manual support. Consumers include IMDb Consumer IMDbPro and partner and AI-assistant channels. Were building these systems into an AI-native discovery engine grounded in IMDbs structured entity graph - titles names credits and verified relationships no competitor has at this depth.

- 6 years of non-internship professional software development experience
- 6 years of programming with at least one software programming language experience
- 6 years of leading design or architecture (design patterns reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
- Experience as a mentor tech lead or leading an engineering team

- 6 years of full software development life cycle including coding standards code reviews source control management build processes testing and operations experience
- Bachelors degree in computer science or equivalent
- Experience building search discovery ranking recommendation or information retrieval systems at scale
- Hands-on experience with AWS OpenSearch Service Elasticsearch or similar search technologies including index design mappings analyzers query optimization relevance tuning sharding and cluster performance
- Experience with GraphQL REST APIs or similar API technologies and building platform/self-service integration paths (typed SDKs versioned contracts)

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status disability or other legally protected status.

Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees supervisors and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees supervisors and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal state and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct adverse and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies exercise sound judgment effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism and safeguard business operations and the Companys reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process including support for the interview or onboarding process please visit for more information. If the country/region youre applying in isnt listed please contact your Recruiting Partner.

The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience qualifications and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical dental vision prescription Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans EAP Mental Health Support Medical Advice Line Flexible Spending Accounts Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage) 401(k) matching paid time off and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at CA Santa Monica - 168100.00 - 227400.00 USD annually