Software Engineer III, Metadata

At Shutterstock, we empower creators around the world with high-quality content and cutting-edge tools to fuel great work. We're seeking a Software Engineer with 5+ years of experience to help build and scale the backend services that power our content discovery, licensing, and delivery platforms across all of our incredible content libraries.

You’ll join a team that’s passionate about clean architecture, performance, and solving complex challenges at scale. If you thrive in a collaborative environment and love building robust APIs, data-driven systems, and data modeling we’d love to hear from you.

What You'll Do

• Design, implement, and maintain backend services using Java, Spring Boot, and the broader Spring ecosystem.

• Build and evolve RESTful APIs that power content metadata, search, recommendation, and licensing workflows.

• Work with Kafka to build event-driven and real-time processing systems.

• Use SQL and work with relational databases to support structured content metadata.

• Partner with data and analytics teams to model data in data warehouses, supporting reporting and analytics use cases.

• Build and maintain DBT models to transform raw data into clean, usable datasets.

• Leverage the AWS ecosystem for service deployment, data storage, and pipeline orchestration.

• Contribute to technical discussions, system design, and code reviews.
   

What You Bring

• 5+ years of professional backend development experience.

• Strong proficiency in Java, with experience using Spring Boot and Spring Framework.

• Experience designing and consuming REST APIs.

• Familiarity with Kafka or other message streaming platforms.

• Solid understanding of relational databases and writing optimized SQL.

• Comfortable working with GraphQL.

• Exposure to Python or willingness to learn.

• A collaborative mindset with strong communication skills.

• A passion for clean code, scalable systems, and continuous learning.
   

Nice-to-Haves

• Practical experience working with data warehouses and DBT for data transformation and modeling.

• Hands-on experience working with the AWS ecosystem (especially Aurora/Dynamo DB).

• Experience working with Node.js and/or Typescript.

• Knowledge of containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).

• Experience with Databricks.

• Background in building systems for search, metadata enrichment, or digital asset management.

Why Shutterstock:
At Shutterstock, you will be part of an innovative and collaborative team that values creativity and forward-thinking. This is an exciting opportunity to shape the future of digital content and technology solutions, driving success for both our clients and Shutterstock.

• You have a direct impact on the success of the company. Your team’s work matters and is essential to the evolution of our core business!

• Executive leadership cares personally. They prioritize growth and planning your career path with your goals and passions in mind.

• Flexibility to work between home and office with everything you need to be successful in both

• A generous and competitive benefits package.

Shutterstock connects diverse artists and creative professionals around the globe with the agencies, brands and people who need their work and services. It’s a place where creators come to be inspired and discover new ways to produce their best work.
Shutterstock enables its employees to drive culture and tap into the world around them to develop the toolbox and solutions that help others share their world views. At Shutterstock, your ideas will be welcomed, your uniqueness will be celebrated, and you will be  supported in presenting your view of the world as you  experience it. We’re champions of resiliency;  quickly learning from our shortcomings in our pursuit of continuous growth.
Diverse teams are critical to our success. We encourage people from different backgrounds to apply and we commit to creating and maintaining a culture where employees know they belong and have equal opportunities to succeed.

Shutterstock Values

We are one team collectively focused on creating an unrivaled experience for our Customers and Contributors. Our Values represent the mindset of the employee who will thrive at Shutterstock.  If you are passionate about what you do, and want to become part of a cutting-edge technology company building industry leading products, please apply.

Shutterstock is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Suitably qualified and eligible candidates are encouraged to apply  regardless of age, color, disability, national origin, ancestry, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable law.

Shutterstock ensures that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment.  Persons with disabilities who anticipate needing accommodations for any part of the application process may contact, in confidence, [email protected].