Senior Software Engineer , Decision Systems

Company Description

Etsy is the global marketplace for unique and creative goods. We build, power, and evolve the tools and technologies that connect millions of entrepreneurs with millions of buyers around the world. As an Etsy Inc. employee, whether a team member of Etsy or Depop, you will tackle unique, meaningful, and large-scale problems alongside passionate coworkers, all the while making a rewarding impact and Keeping Commerce Human.

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Decision Systems turns decisions and confidence signals into adaptive production systems that safely control exposure, payouts, and friction at scale.

• Lead projects aligned to your squad’s objectives in the Trust & Safety space.
• Design and build decisioning services and pipelines that combine rules, model outputs, and human feedback into high throughput, low-latency systems.
• Turn risk and enforcement strategies into concrete, observable controls that protect Etsy’s buyers, sellers, and business.
• Collaborate across Risk, Operations, and other engineering teams to build for the external users who experience the outcomes of these decisions.

This is a full-time position reporting to the Engineering Manager, Decision Systems. In addition to salary, you will also be eligible for an equity package, an annual performance bonus, and our competitive benefits that support you and your family as part of your total rewards package at Etsy.

For this role, we are considering candidates based in the United States. Candidates living within commutable distance of Etsy’s Brooklyn Office Hub may be the first to be considered. For candidates within commutable distance, Etsy requires in-office attendance once or twice per week depending on your proximity to the office. Etsy offers different work modes to meet the variety of needs and preferences of our team.

Learn more details about our work modes and workplace safety policies here.

Decision Systems sits within Etsy’s Detection & Enforcement vertical, partnering closely with ML Engineering and Operations teams to build and evolve the systems that enact decisions at scale.

The team is:

• Purposeful, focused on protecting the marketplace while minimizing unnecessary friction for trustworthy buyers and sellers.
• Highly collaborative and cross-functional, building strong relationships with PMs, data scientists, analysts, and operations partners to align on risk strategies and enforcement behavior.
• Data-informed, using logs, metrics, and feedback from Ops to iterate on controls and improve decision quality over time.

As a Senior Engineer, your day-to-day involves a mix of technical leadership, hands-on implementation, and cross-functional collaboration focused on building robust and secure enforcement systems.

• Design and build decision systems: Implement and evolve services that evaluate signals, scores, and rules to produce consistent enforcement outcomes (e.g., holds, reviews, limitations).
• Collaborate across teams: Partner with Ops, Analytics, ML and Product to clarify requirements, align on tradeoffs, and share impact.
• Join partners in incident remediation as needed to identify patterns of abuse and shut them down.
• Mentor and elevate others: Mentor other engineers via pairing, code reviews, and sharing context.
• Help others break down problems and reason about risk tradeoffs.
• Of course, this is just a sample of the kinds of work this role will require! You should assume that your role will encompass other tasks, too, and that your job duties and responsibilities may change from time to time at Etsy's discretion, or otherwise applicable with local law.

• You have experience crafting and operating backend services that make or orchestrate automated decisions (for example, risk controls, rules engines, or workflow/decision systems), ideally in a large-scale, distributed environment.
• You are familiar with the world of cybersecurity, particularly financial fraud.
• You are proficient in at least one backend language such as PHP, a frontend language like…