Migrating Etsy’s database sharding to Vitess

Etsy has maintained a sharded MySQL architecture since around 2010. This database cluster contains most of Etsy’s online data...

Ella Yarmo-Gray

19 Mar 2026

How Etsy Uses LLMs to Improve Search Relevance

Ever searched for something specific, only to be met with results that are close, but not quite? On Etsy’s Search Relevance...

Yuqing Zhang

16 Jan 2026

Reducing experiment duration with predicted control variates

In 2021, we published a blog post titled “Increasing experimentation accuracy and speed by using control variates,” describing...

Kelly McManus

25 Nov 2025

Unlocking Faster Insights with Experimenter-Defined Segmentations

Imagine you have a fabulous idea to drive more sales on Etsy by giving out free ice cream with every purchase. How would you know...

Athena Chang

8 Oct 2025

Mitigating the winner’s curse in online experiments

Experimentation plays a central role in how we test and deploy new ideas at Etsy. Not only does it provide teams with a scientific...

Stephane Shao

13 Dec 2022

Understanding the collective impact of experiments

Autonomous experimentation is an integral part of Etsy’s product development cycle. Each team designs and runs its own experiments...

Stephane Shao

7 Dec 2022

Improving performance by prefetching product pages from Etsy Search

Rarely are there opportunities for big, bold, game-changing improvements in web performance. The Speculation Rules API (SRA) is...

David Weinzimmer

29 Oct 2025

Adopting Jetpack Compose for Etsy’s Android App

One of our Guiding Principles at Etsy is that we “commit to our craft.” This means that we have a culture of learning, in...

John Kalmi

28 Jan 2025

Macramé: Untangling the Knot on the Etsy Android Listing Screen

Easily the most important and complex screen in the Buy on Etsy Android app is the listing screen, where all key information about...

John Kalmi

18 Mar 2024

Etsy’s Journey to TypeScript

Over the past few years, Etsy’s Web Platform team has spent a lot of time bringing our frontend code up to date. It was only...

Salem Hilal

8 Nov 2021

Mobius: Adopting JSX While Prioritizing User Experience

Keeping up with the latest developments in frontend architecture can be challenging, especially with a codebase the size and age...

Allie Jones

4 Nov 2021

Developing in a Monorepo While Still Using Webpack

When I talk to friends and relatives about what I do at Etsy, I have to come up with an analogy about what Frontend Infrastructure...

Salem Hilal

6 Aug 2020

Behind the Scenes - A Glimpse into Tax Calculations

In the past, sellers were responsible for managing and fulfilling their own tax obligations. However, more and more jurisdictions...

Nancy Arnold

29 Mar 2025

Making The Indian Rupee Work For Humans and Databases

As a global marketplace, Etsy offers support for a few dozen international currencies. Recently we decided to add the Indian rupee...

Marco Gaspari

14 Oct 2022

Plurals at Etsy

Plurals at Etsy If you’ve ever been shopping online and encountered a message like “1 items added to cart” or even “1...

Danielle Grenier

27 Jun 2022

Enhancing Cloud Usage Forecasting, Monitoring & Optimizing

In 2020, Etsy concluded its migration from an on-premise data center to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). During this transition,...

Anthony Tambasco

17 Jun 2024

Scaling Etsy Payments with Vitess: Part 3 – Reducing Cutover Risk

Between Dec 2020 and May 2022, the Etsy Payments Platform, Database Reliability Engineering and Data Access Platform teams moved...

David Leibovic

22 Feb 2023

Scaling Etsy Payments with Vitess: Part 2 – The “Seamless” Migration

Between Dec 2020 and May 2022, the Etsy Payments Platform, Database Reliability Engineering and Data Access Platform teams moved...

Keith Wells

22 Feb 2023

Understanding Etsy’s Vast Inventory with LLMs

For more than 20 years, Etsy has been the destination for human creativity online. Our marketplace is home to more than 100 million...

Vipul Setty

13 Oct 2025

Building Etsy Buyer Profiles with LLMs

Every day, shoppers from Etsy's community of nearly 90M buyers visit our marketplace to search for unique, handmade, and vintage...

Isobel Scott

3 Sept 2025

Machine Learning in Content Moderation at Etsy

At Etsy, we’re focused on elevating the best of our marketplace to help creative entrepreneurs grow their businesses. We continue...

David Azcona

6 Aug 2024

Context engineering case studies: Etsy-specific question answering

This post investigates the benefits and limitations of prompt engineering in two instances of AI-assisted onboarding relying on...

Jerome Bellegarda

19 Aug 2025

Docs-as-code at Etsy

The question of documentation—not just formats and standards, but the tools and processes that can make documenting code a normal...

Afshin Mehrabani

13 Apr 2023

A Customer-Focused Approach to Tooling

One year after Etsy's Frontend Engineering Group successfully swapped JavaScript Unit Testing tools, it was time to tackle another...

Nathan Thompson

14 Jul 2022

How We Built The Deals Tab in Swift UI

Balancing Engineering Ambition with Product Realism Introduction In July of 2023, Etsy’s App Updates team, responsible for the...

Pierre Rodgers

5 Mar 2024

The AR Measuring Box: Etsy's answer to Big Tape Measure

A little while ago, Etsy introduced a new feature in its iOS app that could place Etsy sellers' artwork on a user's wall using...

Pedro Michel

18 Sept 2023

Priority Hints - What Your Browser Doesn’t Know (Yet)

As a rule, users don’t like slow web pages. For online businesses, whose success depends on keeping customers engaged through...

David Ross

25 Jul 2022

Being a Dynamic Leader

When we think about how we grow our people as leaders, our focus is often simply on getting them promoted. But promotion isn’t...

Sean Sutherland

24 Oct 2022

Managing and Leading Globally Distributed Teams

When I started managing globally distributed teams shortly after the 2008 economic crisis, I never would have predicted that it...

Sean Sutherland

24 Oct 2022

Leading your engineering team through an unexpected product pivot

This article was originally written for LeadDev. In tech, we talk a lot about failing fast: implementing small, incremental changes...

Najla Elmachtoub

26 May 2022