A9 Search May Be on the Verge of Improvement
January 11, 2013
Sometimes tidbits of information come from unexpected places. A job posting at LinkedIn for a “Principal Software Engineer- Contextual Relevance” suggests that Amazon may be trying to fix up A9 Product Search. It is good to make use of existing assets, but I do hope any new hire understands what they are getting into. A9 has been panned as a disappointment so far.
The job description reads, in part:
“This is an exciting opportunity to develop the next generation of technologies for understanding unstructured textual content. Leveraging Amazon’s unique assets, we are building industry-leading systems to comprehend textual data and solve challenging contextual relevance problems like key concepts extraction, text classification, and sentiment analysis. Our systems need to operate at internet scale and serve billions of requests every day in a fault tolerant manner and under stringent latency requirements. You will thus need to aim high and invent revolutionary technologies that have a large and direct impact on one of the largest businesses on the web.”
Well, at least they are not downplaying the challenge. Naturally, the credentials required are pretty hefty, but if you think you or someone you know has what it takes, check it out.
The posting also emphasizes that A9.com combines the advantages of a small-business culture with the resources of their parent company. A9 is, not surprisingly, headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, and was formed in 2003 as an Amazon subsidiary. Though perhaps not (yet) all that Amazon hoped for, the search platform is in place and functioning on their site and many other e-commerce sites.
Cynthia Murrell, January 11, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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