Staff Software Engineer

Job Description:
Our Opportunity:
Machine learning platform insights are fundamental to the Chewy customer experience, and the Discovery team's staff of machine learning experts is the driving force behind those insights in search and recommendations. The team is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join the team as a senior technical leader to drive scalable, reliable, and high-impact software systems.
As a Staff SWE, you will provide hands-on technical leadership across multiple initiatives: designing, building, and optimizing ML-driven distributed systems that power search, recommendations, and personalization on the Chewy website. You'll collaborate closely with product engineering, machine learning, and data science teams to bring intelligence and automation into our marketing technology stack.
This role is both strategic and execution-focused: you will shape technical direction, mentor engineers, and contribute directly to the codebase to ensure system excellence and scalability. The ideal candidate is a strong systems thinker who thrives on solving complex problems at scale while fostering technical growth across the team.
What you'll do:

• Lead the design, implementation, and delivery of large-scale, distributed software systems that enable customer insights and personalization in search and recommendations.
• Partner with ML/Platform and Data Science teams to bring ML models into customer-facing applications.
• Collaborate with Principal Engineer to define technical vision and architecture for key Discovery ML workflow and delivery systems, ensuring scalability, performance, and maintainability.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate business objectives into robust, scalable engineering solutions.
• Mentor and guide engineers across multiple levels, fostering technical growth and high-quality delivery.
• Drive initiatives that improve developer productivity, system observability, and operational excellence.

What You'll Need:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 2+ years in a Staff- or Principal-level technical leadership role.
• Proven success designing and delivering high-performance, distributed systems or large-scale workflows and services.
• Strong proficiency in one or more modern programming languages (e.g., Java, Kotlin, Python).
• Proficiency in Terraform and Jenkins
• Deep understanding of system design, architecture patterns, and cloud-based deployment (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Experience integrating with or supporting ML pipelines, APIs, or data-driven applications.
• Demonstrated ability to drive cross-team technical initiatives and influence architectural decisions.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to partner effectively across engineering, product, and data science teams.

Bonus:

• Experience in e-commerce or retail.
• Experience with modern MLOps.
• Exposure to front-end or product-facing integration of ML features.
• Experience with AWS Sagemaker and other ML platform tooling.
• Experience working with large distributed datasets and ML feature engineering.
• Prior experience mentoring and growing engineers into more senior technical roles.
• Advanced degree (MS or PhD) in Computer Science or related field.

The base salary range for this role is $166,000 - $265,000.00.

• The specific salary offered to a candidate may be influenced by a variety of factors including but not limited to the candidate's relevant experience, education, and work location. In addition, this position is eligible for 401k and a new hire and annual equity grant. C08+ positions may also be eligible for annual bonus.

We offer different types of insurance and benefits, such as medical/Rx, vision, dental, life, disability, hospital indemnity, critical illness, and accident. We offer parental leave, family services benefits, backup dependent care, flexible spending accounts, telemedicine, pet adoption reimbursement, employee assistance program, and many discounts including 10% off pet insurance and 20% off at Chewy.com.
Exempt salary team members have unlimited PTO, subject to manager approval. Team members will receive six paid holidays per year. Team members may be eligible for paid sick and family leave in compliance with applicable state and local regulations.
Chewy is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, gender, citizenship, marital status, religion, age, disability, gender identity, results of genetic testing, veteran status, as well as any other legally-protected characteristic. If you have a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act or similar law, and you need an accommodation during the application process or to perform these job requirements, or if you need a religious accommodation, please contact [email protected].
To access Chewy's California CPRA Job Applicant Privacy Policy, please click here.