Tumblr launched in 2007 with the belief that people need a place to say what they want, be who they want, and connect over their interests. We continue to build Tumblr as a platform for free expression, individuality, and human connection. 

We are looking for an experienced candidate to join our Feeds Experience team, which builds Tumblr’s backend systems—powering core content feeds, search, personalization/discovery experiences, user-interest profiling, content understanding and notifications. Your goal will be to design, develop and maintain large-scale data pipelines and backend services, to connect users with the content they love. The team plays a critical role in driving daily active users by improving engagement and retention on Tumblr.

We build on top of open source big-data frameworks, such as Apache Spark (batch processing) and Apache Flink (real-time processing), orchestrated by Kubernetes, Apache Airflow, and with a PHP backend layer.

Responsibilities: 

  • Collaborate with the team to enhance engagement on feeds, notifications, content discovery and relevance of search results. This will involve developing algorithms, data-pipelines and backend-services to match millions of users with the most relevant and engaging content, detecting trends, improving search retrieval and relevance, and striking a balance between driving engagement to established and new content creators.   
  • Research and develop new features to improve user engagement and the reactivation of lapsed users. 
  • Define success metrics, launch A/B tests, perform analysis to validate hypotheses, and build tools to enable continuous experimentation.
  • With stakeholders from Engineering, Product, and User Research, contribute to the team’s strategy and roadmap. This includes identifying short- and long-term opportunities for business impact on Feeds, Search, and Notifications; discussing alternatives; driving architectural decisions and implementation; and,finally, quantifying the impact of implemented solutions and distilling learnings.

Requirements: 

  • Good understanding of statistics, machine learning, and mining of massive datasets.
  • 3+ years of professional experience developing large-scale data-pipelines and machine learning approaches for content retrieval, ranking, relevance, and personalization. 
  • 5+ years of professional experience in software engineering, with expertise in at least one among the following programming languages: Python, Scala, Java.  You will encounter all of them in this role, as well as PHP; the idea of using them on a regular basis should not be a blocker for you.
  • Have hands-on experience with data processing frameworks like Apache Spark and Apache Flink at scale. 
  • You have excellent written English and can effectively communicate with stakeholders and colleagues from a cross functional organization. Communication is our oxygen and the basis of everything we do.
  • You are goal driven, humble, and have equal willingness to learn and teach. 
  • Excitement to join a globally distributed team. Familiarity with remote and async work is welcome.

What will make you stand out:

  • MS/PhD in Computer Science, ML, or related fields.
  • Experience in large-scale notifications systems for driving user growth and engagement loops.
  • Deep expertise in search ranking and relevance at scale, in particular with Elasticsearch.
  • Experience in embedding-based recommendation and retrieval.
  • Experience in real-time stream processing frameworks.

Salary range: $100,000-$200,000 USD - Please note that salary ranges are global, regardless of location, and we pay in local currency.

This isn’t your typical work-from-home job—we are a fully-remote company with an open vacation policy. Read more about our compensation philosophy. To see a full list of benefits by country, consult our Benefits Page. And check out these links to learn more about How We Hire and What We Expect from Ourselves.

About Automattic 

We are the people behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, Simplenote, Jetpack, Longreads, Day One, PocketCasts, and more. We believe in making the web a better place.

We’re a distributed company with more than 1900 Automatticians in 96 countries speaking 120+ different languages. And, even more than growth and profitability (although we’re plenty profitable), above all, we’re driven by a mission:  We democratize publishing and commerce so anyone with a story can tell it, and anyone with a product can sell it, regardless of income, gender, politics, language, or country.

We believe in Open Source, and the vast majority of our work is available under the GPL.

Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion at Automattic 

We’re improving diversity in the tech industry. At Automattic, we want people to love their work and show respect and empathy to all. We welcome differences and strive to increase participation from traditionally underrepresented groups. Our DEI committee involves Automatticians across the company and drives grassroots change. For example, this group has helped facilitate private online spaces for affiliated Automatticians to gather and helps run a monthly DEI People Lab series for further learning. DEI is a priority at Automattic, though our dedication influences far more than just Automatticians: We make our products freely available and translate our products into and offer customer support in numerous languages. We require unconscious bias training for our hiring teams and ensure our products are accessible across different bandwidths and devices. 

Automattic is a Most Loved Company and Disability Confident Committed. (Here’s what that might mean for you.) Learn more about our dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusion and our Employee Resource Groups.

Apply for this Job

* Required
resume chosen  
(File types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf)


Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Automattic Careers’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.


Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 04/30/2026

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.


Enter the verification code sent to to confirm you are not a robot, then submit your application.

This application was flagged as potential bot traffic. To resubmit your application, turn off any VPNs, clear the browser's cache and cookies, or try another browser. If you still can't submit it, contact our support team through the help center.