Software Development Engineer II, Catalog Discovery (CatDisco)

Software Development Engineer

Zappos is seeking a Software Development Engineer to join our Catalog Discovery team. As a SDE, you will drive design and implementation decisions that enhance the customer experience, making it easier and more fun for customers to find the products they want. You will be responsible for designing and building scalable systems that power our world-class selection of Shoes, Kids, and Active wear across both platforms.

A key focus of this role will be defining and implementing significant improvements to our Product Listing Pages (PLP) and Product Detail Pages (PDP) for both Zappos and our sister company Shopbop. You'll architect next-generation search and discovery experiences that enhance relevancy, filtering capabilities, and the overall customer journey. You will also contribute to Zappos systems across the new product lifecycle, from buying products, capturing product details, and generating best-in-class product imagery through innovative technical solutions.

This includes developing innovative solutions for faceted navigation, personalized product recommendations, and unified catalog data models that serve both brands while maintaining their unique identities. You'll leverage technologies including LLM and ML tooling to push the boundaries of what's possible in e-commerce product discovery while ensuring consistent performance at scale.

Key Job Responsibilities

• Design and develop scalable, high-performance Java-based applications utilizing AWS services (ECS, SQS, S3, DynamoDB)
• Lead technical initiatives to improve the accuracy and efficiency of our catalog systems
• Architect and implement next-generation search and discovery experiences for Product Listing Pages (PLP) across Zappos and Shopbop
• Design and build enhanced Product Detail Page (PDP) systems that optimize for conversion, customer engagement, and cross-selling opportunities
• Develop innovative solutions to improve search relevancy, faceted navigation, and personalized product recommendations
• Create unified catalog data models that serve both Zappos and Shopbop while maintaining brand-specific customer experiences
• Push technical horizons by implementing technologies including LLM and ML tooling for improved product discovery
• Partner with product managers, UX designers, and business stakeholders to translate ambiguous requirements into elegant technical solutions
• Mentor junior developers by providing meaningful feedback and raising the bar on coding standards
• Drive architecture and technology choices that enable elegant, practical, and maintainable code
• Work backwards from customer problems to design and implement solutions optimized for speed and scalability
• Create technical documentation and decision records to build alignment with senior management and engineering teams
• Dive deep with engineering teams to refine requirements and unblock technical challenges

A day in the life

Your morning starts with code reviews and identifying a performance bottleneck in a search feature. You lead a technical design review for an ML-based product categorization system to improve search relevancy across Zappos and Shopbop. After analyzing A/B test results from a recent PDP enhancement, you work on integrating LLM capabilities for better product descriptions. Later, you collaborate with UX designers on a faceted navigation system for PLPs and document your approach for a unified catalog data model that preserves each brand's unique customer experience.

About the team

The Zappos/Shopbop Catalog Discovery team owns the software that drives our photo studio, product cataloging, product procurement, and integration to Amazon's marketplace. We're responsible for creating world-class search (PLP) and product detail (PDP) experiences that showcase our products in the most compelling way across both brands. Our systems handle millions of customer interactions daily, requiring innovative solutions that balance performance, relevancy, and user experience.

We use Amazon's Leadership Principles and Engineering Expertise but have our own fun vibe. We are in New York, Madison, and Las Vegas.