Senior Applied Researcher - Search (m/f/d)

About the team and the role:

The Search Query Science team at eBay is a key driver of the company's search revenue and is growing rapidly. We're building a world-class team that values bold, innovative thinking and rewards impact. Our work focuses on solving core e-commerce search challenges—like query rewriting, annotation, classification, and recovery—using cutting-edge ML algorithms that interpret large-scale user behavior. With a fun, collaborative environment, we're now looking for stellar applied researchers to develop advanced query understanding products. If you're excited by large-scale query processing—intent detection, entity resolution, categorization, expansion and filter recommendation—join us and help redefine query understanding at eBay.

What you will accomplish:

• Tackle advanced AI challenges in Query Science and NLP at eBay.
• Collaborate with researchers and engineers on cutting-edge technologies.
• Contribute to solving complex problems that impact eBay's platform.
• Help shape the technical vision for query understanding.
• Apply software engineering best practices to improve development experience.
• Build offline data pipelines for ML model training and validation.
• Design and deploy web services for serving real-time inference algorithms.
• Mentor junior colleagues and raise the technical bar within and outside your team.

What you will bring:

• A PhD in Computer Science/Engineering or related fields, and/or at least 8 years of experience in the field;
• Proven track record of applied research and software development in the ML/NLP realm (e.g. publications in top-tier scientific venues, contributions to open-source software projects, etc.);
• Strong education in computer science (data structures and algorithms, computational complexity analysis) and proficiency with multiple programming languages (Python/Java/Scala/C/C++/scripting languages);
• Experience with service-oriented architectures and frameworks (e.g. SpringBoot), cloud computing solutions (Docker, Kubernetes, etc.), and databases;
• Proven ability to work independently and make good decisions with minimal direction;
• Strong communication skills (fluent English, both verbal and written).