Entry Level Java Software Engineer Jobs in Columbia, MD

Verisign is looking for Junior Java software engineer to expand the Name Studio API team (https://www.namestudioapi.com/).

An ideal candidate should understand Cloud Computing, preferably AWS, has some knowledge of Machine Learning and/or LLMs, and is eager to learn as needed. In the candidate, we seek an understanding of software engineering fundamentals, including core Computer Science concepts, as well as hands-on problem-solving experience building software systems.

The candidate will be involved in all aspects of product development including ideation, design, implementation, deployment, and issue resolution. This will usually imply cross-team collaboration with Product, Engineering, Security and Operations.

Responsibilities include:

• Develop 'Proof of concept' software applications based on research findings
• Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders on software applications design, development and technology assessment
• Work with stakeholders to define requirements specifications. Participates in requirements gathering, design, code and test plan reviews
• Contribute to software development, including future AI initiatives or/and Cloud initiatives, for the team

Product

Name Studio API (https://namestudioapi.com) is an API-as-a-service recommender system for domain names. The following two videos explain briefly why our customers use the product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yntg0HSrPXE and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaFd_b0-wDo [CM1]

From an implementation standpoint, Name Studio API is a Java, Spring Boot application implementing algorithms and using external libraries (such as Tensorflow) to generate domain suggestions. The system applies state-of-the-art neural language models and natural language processing algorithms on top of multiple data sources, including trending topics, popular keywords, geography, semantic relevance, and others. Additionally, we are leveraging Large Language Models hosted in the AWS Cloud to serve highly creative suggestions. This is done across 10+ languages (English, French, German, Spanish etc) and thousands of zones (.com, .net, .cc, etc). Whenever you get a domain name suggestion online, be it with a blogging platform or a cloud provider, there is a high chance it is powered by our API behind the scenes.

The key challenges we face when building the product are obtaining high quality, relevant, and meaningful domain suggestions people like while offering very low response times on a global scale, serving high request volumes.

Team

Our team possesses complete engineering ownership over the product. The work style of the team is closer to an internal startup where all the team members are involved in the majority of product development phases and are flexible moving between focus areas.

In terms of the process, we rely on Scrum to structure our work, with tickets prioritized in Jira. Our code is located on internal GitHub; we follow Git Flow with pull request code reviews and extensive automation. For continuous delivery, we use Jenkins with pipelines and our product deployments are automated with Terraform and Ansible. The product can be rolled out to a cloud, from zero to the operating state in a single button click. We do builds for each codebase change as well as nightly builds. We have automated testing with substantial coverage. For processing large amounts of data, internal Hadoop and Spark clusters are available. On top of that, we leverage Large Language Models to generate creative suggestions and we are developing an extensive Large Language Models testing framework to validate the quality of our results.

We do not expect candidates to have experience with every tool listed. We are looking for someone who can quickly learn and adapt to new tools as needed.

Requirements include:

• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including core Computer Science concepts
• Experience with AWS Cloud
• Familiarity with one or more of the following is desirable: Java, Spring Boot
• Familiarity with data science concepts including large language models, MLOps, or machine learning
• Familiarity with UNIX-like operating systems
• Demonstration of understanding of Secure Coding standards
• Excellent communication skills (verbal and written), eager to learn new technologies

Education and experience:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field with 2+ years software development experience
• or a Master's degree with hands-on software development work experience through demonstrable projects or internships
• or equivalent experience

This position is based in our Reston, VA office and offers a hybrid work schedule.

The pay range is $89,900 - $121,700. 

The anticipated annual base salary range for this position is noted above, however, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience. Verisign offers a discretionary bonus which is based on individual and company performance, and certain roles may be eligible for discretionary stock awards.