Research Engineering: From Ideas to Action
Yahoo! Research engineers are like hikers who avoid well-trodden paths, preferring to go where there are no trails. They help turn big-picture thoughts and blue-sky ideas into tangible demos and prototypes that can be adopted by product teams. The ultimate goal: delight consumers, advertisers and publishers—and generate significant revenue for Yahoo!
“The relationship between scientists and research engineers is very synergistic,” says Janet George, head of the research engineering group at Yahoo! Research. “It is a direct partnership based on very close collaboration.”
Research engineers work alongside Yahoo!’s world-class scientists to deliver the next generation of business to the company. They focus on a variety of project types, including rapid prototype and proof-of-concept development, research engineering libraries and tools, and platforms for distributed computing and algorithm evaluation.
The scientists, of course, bring a combination of theoretical and practical knowledge to the relationship, conducting the research and selecting the projects. The research engineers, for their part, focus on the implementation, often building novel engineering solutions from the ground up. Because research engineers understand the scientific community so well, they regularly publish papers with their scientist colleagues.
Research engineers at Yahoo! have that special something. They are not afraid to push the limits or explore uncharted territories. “As a research engineer, you have to be at the top of your game, passionate about software engineering solutions, yet able to thrive in a very dynamic research environment,” George explains. “If you need to wake up in the morning and work on the same piece of a static code, then this probably isn’t the right organization for you. But if you’re highly intelligent, creative, fearless in the face of unknowns, and are constantly thinking about ways to innovate and improve, this could be a good fit.”
Not every research engineer is the same. The organization has room for many different specialties and skill sets. It has “deep divers” who love to plumb the depths of a particular project or research area. But it also has “world travelers” who lend their skills to many different projects, moving from one focus area to another.
“Our charter is to work with research scientists to develop novel software engineering solutions for problems in information retrieval, machine learning, computational linguistics, matrix and graph algorithms, unsupervised clustering, data mining, human-computer interaction/user experience and microeconomics,” George says.
The research engineering organization also helps bridge the gap between scientists and product groups. “It’s essential that the work done in Yahoo! Research comes alive in the product teams,” George says. Research engineers accomplish this by working with scientists to turn research into technology that can be implemented in the real world. They also work hand in hand with product teams, presenting demos and soliciting feedback to ensure that research projects find adoption within Yahoo!.
For big inventions and large scale projects, the research engineering group has created a system where scientists, research engineers and product engineers work in partnership almost to the point where a research or product engineer can live in research for a certain time and then move back into product with ownership of code, continuing to build upon the initial prototype.
Because Yahoo! is a company that prides itself on innovation and big thinking, there are numerous avenues for fresh ideas to bubble up more effectively. For instance, one initiative led by research engineers Vinay Kakade, Pras Sarkar, Ramana Yerneni and Ashwinder Ahluwahlia recently won the “most promising” award at a Yahoo! Hack Day.
The idea, called discovr, helps facilitate social networking between friends you didn’t know you had. It has since been adopted by several different product teams and deployed “live” in the Yahoo Mash product as “Friend Finder”.
The research engineering group is growing fast. Earlier this year, it opened a new office in Bangalore, India. Why Bangalore? Because some of the brightest technical talent in the world can now be found in India, and Yahoo! is committed to going wherever it can to recruit the best people.
“We are proud to be part of the most critical projects at Yahoo!,” George says. “Research engineers do whatever it takes to succeed. We’re committed to flawless execution.”
