--- title: 'Senior Engineering Manager, Recommender Systems at Raya' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-engineering-manager-recommender-systems-raya-remote-d3c2fypesd37' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-11-11' --- # Senior Engineering Manager, Recommender Systems at Raya - **Company:** Raya - **Location:** Remote - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** remote - **Posted:** 2026-11-05 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-11 - **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/raya/896fd99e-2555-4d29-ab6b-35461abf3c36 ## Job description As Engineering Manager for Recommender Systems, you'll lead the team that builds the backend retrieval and ranking infrastructure behind recommendations at Raya. You'll partner closely with the head of ML to drive our tech strategy and ensure our members get the best experience possible on the core surface of our product. We are looking for someone who is technically strong, has deep experience with production recommender systems, and has intuitive product-focused user empathy. We offer comprehensive medical and dental coverage, $50 a day food delivery budget, equity based employment, a great culture, learning opportunities, unlimited vacation, 12 weeks paid parental leave, and we pay all employees $1,000 a year to go somewhere in the world that they’ve never been because of our values of human connection, empathy, and curiosity. ## Responsibilities - Build, coach, and retain a high-performing backend team that specializes in recommender systems. - Own reliable, low-latency production systems, observability, and incident response for recommendations. Catch regressions in latency, quality, or fairness before users notice. - Create and execute a technical strategy that is grounded in deep product intuition and empathy for the end-user experience. - Partner with the Machine Learning team to define roadmaps. Balance user-facing improvements with investments in infrastructure, reliability, and experimentation. - Work with Data Science to co-own experimentation processes, tools, and best practices. ## Qualifications - 3+ years managing engineers, with direct responsibility for hiring, performance management, career development, and delivery. - Experience leading or building production recommender systems at scale. - Hands-on depth in high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems that serve millions of users. - Expertise in Go, Java/JVM, or a similar backend language; Postgres, and AWS/GCP, and Kubernetes. What Sets You Apart - Experience with social networks or two-sided marketplaces in a subscription setting: you understand reciprocal interest, exposure, liquidity, and how great recommendations create long-term retentive value. - Familiarity with how machine learning and AI fit into modern recommender systems. - Experience with retrieval infrastructure such as Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, vector search, or feature stores. ## About Raya ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Raya is a private, membership-based community platform where people around the world can connect and collaborate to find life partners, friends, and professional opportunities. - **Entity Type**: Private (Pre-Seed funded, 2016) - **Headquarters**: Los Angeles, California, United States - **Founded**: 2015 - **Founders**: Not publicly disclosed ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Technology, Information and Internet - **Target customers**: B2C – Adults seeking a trusted, curated social networking experience - **Mission or purpose statement**: To create a trusted online community where people feel comfortable finding life partners, friends, and work collaborations, and to bring these interactions into the real world. ## Products & Services - **Raya App**: A membership-based social community platform that uses an application process with algorithmic assessment and anonymous committee input to curate its user base. Members pay a monthly fee and are expected to follow rules of respect, trust, and privacy. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available - **Key Metric**: Total Funding – At least one Pre-Seed round ($1.6M led by Atlas Finance Group in Dec 2016) and another round in June 2019 (details undisclosed). Additional investors include Dreamers VC, Analog Ventures, Section 32, X&Management, and Niche Capital. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Atlas Finance Group, Dreamers VC, Analog Ventures, Section 32, X&Management, Niche Capital - **Growth Signals**: Headcount of ~101 employees, with a **yearly growth of +38.6%**. Workforce distributed across 15 countries. Active job postings are up **+33.3% year-over-year**, indicating expansion. ## Competitive Advantages - **High Curation/Exclusivity**: Raya’s strict application process (with referrals and committee review) creates a highly selective, trust-based community that differentiates it from mass-market social networks. - **Community-First Culture**: Strong emphasis on member behavior and shared values; low report rate (~1 in 11,000 connections) signals a high-quality user experience. - **Privacy & Trust**: Strict policies against hate, excessive wealth display, and disrespect, creating a safe environment for genuine connections. ## Strategic Focus - **Global Expansion**: Raya has openings in Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, and Mexico City, and is actively growing its engineering and product teams. - **AI & ML Integration**: The company has a dedicated Head of Machine Learning, AI, and Data, and uses algorithms to assess applications and improve the community experience. - **Product Development**: Active hiring for Product Managers and Senior Backend Engineers suggests investment in new features (e.g., "Places") and scaling core infrastructure. ## Why Work Here - **Career Growth**: Fast-growing company (+38.6% YoY headcount) with opportunities to take on ownership in engineering, product, and AI/ML roles. - **Global & Remote-first Culture**: Fully remote roles available, with global hubs and a diverse team across 15 countries. - **Technical Challenges**: Work on complex systems for recommendations, member experience, and internal tools using a modern stack (Python, Node.js, Kubernetes, MongoDB, TensorFlow, Looker, dbt). - **Culture**: Described as a "family of talented individuals" devoted to fostering human connection through technology. - **Location Flexibility**: Remote roles; hubs in major cities worldwide. ## Sources 1. [rayatheapp.com](https://www.rayatheapp.com/about) 2. [rayatheapp.com/careers](https://www.rayatheapp.com/careers) 3. [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/company/rayatheapp) 4. [Lever.co](https://jobs.lever.co/raya) 5. [CBInsights](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/raya) ## Other roles at Raya - [Senior Software Engineer, Full Stack (iOS & Backend)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-full-stack-ios-backend-raya-remote-qmt7vf4pzh9v) - [Senior Data Scientist, Places](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-data-scientist-places-raya-remote-etbw7y5jr4j0) - [Senior iOS Engineer, Places](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ios-engineer-places-raya-remote-28z3q415ehp7) - [Community Support Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/community-support-manager-raya-remote-gx6gz795v99r) - [Server Engineering Manager, Member Experience](https://feeny.ai/job/server-engineering-manager-member-experience-raya-remote-gbxfa0qmj3tn) - [Full-Stack Engineer, Internal Tools](https://feeny.ai/job/full-stack-engineer-internal-tools-raya-remote-796srqpyyy3m) - [Senior Backend Engineer, Member Experience](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-backend-engineer-member-experience-raya-remote-kthfw491fyv4)