Senior Backend Engineering Manager, Recommendations

Match Group is hiring a Senior Backend Engineering Manager, Recommendations in New York, United States. It pays $219k-$263k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Match Group.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this role Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
Tools and skills the posting cites include PyTorch, TensorFlow and MLflow.
Level classifies it as a senior role.
Level lists 60 other open roles at Match Group.

AI in this role

PyTorchTensorFlowMLflow

ml-ops

Hinge is the dating app designed to be deleted
In today's digital world, finding genuine relationships is tougher than ever. At Hinge, we’re on a mission to inspire intimate connection to create a less lonely world. We’re obsessed with understanding our users’ behaviors to help them find love, and our success is defined by one simple metric– setting up great dates. With millions of users across the globe, we’ve become the most trusted way to find a relationship, for all.
About the Role At Hinge, the recommendation engine is a central part of our product. Every interaction users have with each other on our app begins with the systems your team builds and owns. As the engineering manager of this team, you will help drive the strategy and execution behind the infrastructure and features that power our recommendations. You’ll work closely with machine learning engineers, product managers, data scientists, and data engineers to build systems that balance personalization, fairness, and user experience at scale, from low-latency match-serving pipelines to the candidate retrieval and ranking systems that determine who users see and when.
Our ability to provide good recommendations is central to achieving trust, engagement, and, most importantly, whether people can find who they’re looking for on Hinge.

Responsibilities

Lead, mentor, and grow a team of 6-8 engineers building recommendation services
Partner with ML to productionize recommendation models and ensure low-latency, high-availability serving infrastructure
Own the technical roadmap for the recommender platform, balancing new capabilities with reliability and performance improvements
Drive architecture decisions for recommendation and search infrastructure
Establish and maintain engineering standards for code quality, testing, observability, and incident response
Collaborate with Product, Design, and cross-functional engineering teams to define and deliver product-facing recommendation features
Manage hiring, performance reviews, career development, and team culture

What We're Looking For

8+ years of software engineering experience, with 4+ years in an engineering management role
Strong backend systems expertise – you've built or operated large-scale distributed systems in production
Experience with recommendation systems, search ranking, personalization, or adjacent ML-serving infrastructure
Proficiency in one or more backend languages (ideally Go)
Familiarity with data processing architectures, feature stores, and model-serving technologies (e.g., Kafka, Spark, ElasticSearch, etc)
Track record of hiring, developing, and retaining high-performing engineering teams
Ability to communicate technical trade-offs clearly to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders

Nice to Have

Experience with ML frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch) or MLOps tooling (MLflow, Kubeflow, Airflow)
Hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and container orchestration (Kubernetes)
Background in A/B testing and experimentation platforms
Prior work at scale (millions of daily active users or equivalent throughput)

#LI-GL1
As a member of our team, you’ll enjoy:
401(k) Matching: We match 100% of the first 10% of pre-tax 401(k) contributions you make, up to a maximum of $10,000 per year.
Professional Growth: Get an annual Learning & Development stipend once you’ve been with us for three months. You also get free access to Udemy, an online learning and teaching marketplace with over 6000 courses, starting your first day.
Parental Leave & Planning: When you become a new parent, you’re eligible for 100% paid parental leave (20 paid weeks for both birth and non-birth parents.)
Fertility Support: You’ll get easy access to fertility care through Carrot, from basic treatments to fertility preservation. We also provide a stipend towards fertility preservation. You and your spouse/domestic partner are both eligible.
Date Stipend: All Hinge employees receive a $100 monthly stipend for epic dates– Romantic or otherwise. Hinge Premium is also free for employees and their loved ones.
ERGs: We have eight Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)—Asian, Unapologetic, Disability, LGBTQIA+, Raices, Women/Nonbinary, Parents —that hold regular meetings, host events, and provide dedicated support to the organization & its community.
At Hinge, our core values are…
Authenticity: We share, never hide, our words, actions and intentions.
Courage: We embrace lofty goals and tough challenges.
Empathy: We deeply consider the perspective of others.
Diversity inspires innovation
Hinge is an equal-opportunity employer. We value diversity at our company and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We believe success is created by a diverse workforce of individuals with different ideas, strengths, interests, and cultural backgrounds.
If you require reasonable accommodation to complete a job application, pre-employment testing, or a job interview or to otherwise participate in the hiring process, please let your Talent Acquisition partner know.
#Hinge

How we rate this

Senior Backend Engineering Manager, Recommendations at Match Group rates 90 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Senior Backend Engineering Manager, Recommendations is an open job at Match Group.
Level rates this role AI Level 4 of 4: Builds AI.
The listed salary is $219k-$263k a year.
The role is based in New York, New York.
The job was posted on April 28, 2026.
Seniority: senior.
Applications are handled by Match Group. Apply on Match Group

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

ML OpsPyTorchTensorFlowMLflow

Questions you could be asked

How do you monitor a model once it's live, and how do you know it needs retraining?
Walk me through how you've used PyTorch in your day-to-day work.
What are the limits of TensorFlow that you've run into, and how did you work around them?
What's a project where you used MLflow hands-on?
How would you decide a model or AI system is ready to ship?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: ML Ops, PyTorch, TensorFlow, and MLflow. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.

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