Etsy Engineering13 min readAug 19, 2025

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 large language model (LLM) technology. Of particular interest is how tru

Backend AI

large language model (LLM)Prompt EngineeringAI-Assisted OnboardingQuestion AnsweringContext Engineering

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Making Ads Count: Using MMoE and Auxiliary Tasks to Better Connect Buyers & Sellers

When buyers search on Etsy, they need to quickly and easily find the perfect item. At the same time, sellers need to be confident their unique products are...

Etsy Engineering11 min18d ago

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 and is made up of ~1,000 tables...

Distributed SystemsDatabases

MySQLVitessKubernetesDatabase ShardingLarge Scale SystemMicroservicesDatabase Architecture

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Context engineering case studies: Etsy-specific question answering

Making Ads Count: Using MMoE and Auxiliary Tasks to Better Connect Buyers & Sellers

Migrating Etsy’s database sharding to Vitess

How Etsy Uses LLMs to Improve Search Relevance