What are the responsibilities and job description for the Principal Software Engineer, AI & Matching position at Bumble Inc.?
At Bumble, our mission is to create a world where all relationships are healthy and equitable. Our AI & Matching team plays a critical role in bringing this to life- powering the intelligence behind the experiences that help people build meaningful connections, safely and confidently.
As a Principal Software Engineer, AI & Matching, you will define and build the next generation of systems that make Bumble smarter, more adaptive, and more helpful for our members. This is a highly technical leadership role focused on designing and scaling core matching, recommendation, retrieval, ranking, and agentic AI systems that directly shape the user experience.
You will work across engineering, machine learning, product, and trust & safety to turn advances in AI into production systems that are reliable, low-latency, and deeply aligned with user value. This role is ideal for someone who combines strong software engineering fundamentals with deep experience building ML-powered products and a passion for applying AI to real user problems at scale.
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Lead the architecture and technical direction for matching and AI agent systems that power personalization, discovery, recommendations, and user assistance across Bumble
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Design and build high-scale, low-latency production services for retrieval, ranking, recommendations, decisioning, and agent orchestration
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Drive the evolution of Bumble’s matching architecture, including how models, business logic, real-time signals, and product experiences work together in production
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Partner closely with ML engineers and applied scientists to productionize models for training, online inference, evaluation, and continuous improvement
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Help define how AI agents can be safely and effectively integrated into the Bumble experience, including tool use, orchestration, memory, and decision boundaries
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Make strong technical tradeoffs across classical software, machine learning, and LLM-based approaches based on latency, quality, cost, safety, and user impact
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Set engineering standards for system design, reliability, experimentation, observability, and responsible AI in user-facing intelligent systems
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Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Design, Trust & Safety, Data Science, and Infrastructure to deliver end-to-end user experiences from concept to production
- Mentor senior and staff-level engineers, raise the technical bar across the organization, and influence architecture well beyond your immediate team
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Deep expertise as a software engineer building large-scale distributed systems, with significant experience in consumer-facing or marketplace products
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Strong track record designing and operating production recommendation, matching, search, ranking, personalization, or decisioning systems
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Experience building systems that integrate machine learning models into real-time product experiences, including online serving, experimentation, and monitoring
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Strong understanding of the tradeoffs between traditional software, ML systems, and LLM/agent-based architectures, and when each is the right tool
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Experience building or scaling AI-native product capabilities, such as copilots, assistants, tool-using agents, or conversational/intelligent workflows
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Ability to operate at both the architectural and implementation level: setting long-term direction while staying close enough to the code and systems to drive execution
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Proven ability to influence technical strategy across multiple teams and deliver in complex, ambiguous problem spaces
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Strong product instincts and the ability to translate user needs into robust technical systems that create measurable business and member impact
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Commitment to building AI systems responsibly, with attention to privacy, safety, transparency, and fairness
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Typically requires 12 years of experience, though we welcome candidates with alternative backgrounds that demonstrate equivalent skills.
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High level of AI fluency, with the ability to both apply AI tools in your own work and guide teams in embedding AI into systems and workflows at scale
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You role model Bumble values such as Courage and Respect, collaborate effectively across disciplines, take ownership of outcomes, and see work through from insight to measurable impact with an agile mindset
About Us
Bumble Inc. is the parent company of Bumble Date, BFF, and Badoo. The Bumble platform enables people to build healthy and equitable relationships, through Kind Connections. Founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd in 2014, Bumble was one of the first dating apps built with women at the center and connects people across dating (Bumble Date) and friendship (BFF). BFF is a friendship app where people in all stages of life can meet people nearby and create meaningful platonic connections and community based on shared interests. Badoo, which was founded in 2006, is one of the pioneers of web and mobile dating products.
AI Fluency
AI is important to us. We’re excited by people who are curious and experimental, and who think thoughtfully about how AI can amplify their impact and outcomes.
We encourage you to use AI responsibly as you prepare your application. Please don’t use it to fabricate experiences or answer questions live in interviews. We care deeply about authenticity and want to understand your real skills, judgment and voice, because building a meaningful, genuine connection with you matters to us.
Final Compensation
Will be determined based on factors such as the selected candidate’s qualifications, relevant experience, skill set, and other job-related considerations.
Benefits & Perks
Insurance: Medical/dental/vision, 30-day eligibility. Bumble has multiple competitive offerings that will be available to you on the first of the month following date of hire.
Unlimited PTO 1 company-wide week off Focus Fridays every week
Fully paid life and long-term disability insurance
401k with 4% company match if you contribute 6%, 90-day eligibility
Monthly wellness benefit and access to Noom, Unmind, and Your Money Line
Maternity and Fertility benefit 26 week paid parental leave
Premium App Access
Inclusion at Bumble Inc.
Bumble Inc. is an equal opportunity employer and we strongly encourage people of all ages, colour, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and non-binary people, veterans, parents, people with disabilities, and neurodivergent people to apply. We're happy to make any reasonable adjustments that will help you feel more confident throughout the process, please don't hesitate to let us know how we can help.
In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use (For example: she/her, he/him, they/them, etc).
AI in Bumble Inc. Hiring
At Bumble, we may use AI tools to support parts of our recruitment process — such as helping us record, transcribe, and summarize conversations, and supporting job alignment by comparing resumes and job descriptions to highlight skills and potential roles that may be a good match. These tools help us work more efficiently and stay focused on you during our conversations. Importantly, all hiring decisions are made by people. AI is used only to support our team’s efficiency and improve the candidate experience — not to evaluate or decide on your candidacy. Participation in AI-supported interviews and conversations is completely voluntary and will not impact your candidacy. If you’d prefer to opt out, simply let your recruiter or interviewer know at the start of a call, or anytime during the interview or conversation. Summaries and related data are retained only as long as needed in line with our internal data retention policies. If at any point you’d like a transcription or summary deleted, please contact your recruiter directly.
For further information on how we hold and manage your data, please refer to our Privacy Policy.
Salary : $280,000 - $320,000