Life @ Tinder | The Blog

When Your Model Hates Helicopters: Getting LLM Features From "It Works" to "We'd Bet On It"

A post about two photo Tinder® features we built on our team (Photo Feedback and a hybrid Smart Photo ordering model), and what it actually took to get them there.

Merlin: The Tinder® Harness Around AI Coding Agents

AI coding agents can write code. Merlin turns that capability into a reliable workflow: planning the work, verifying changes, asking for help when needed, and producing results people can review.

Upgrading Tinder to Xcode 26 with Cursor

How Tinder used AI-powered development workflows to turn one of its most complex iOS upgrades into a faster, safer, and surprisingly scalable migration.

Undercover Agent: How We Built an AI That Tests Coverage While We Sleep

We built an AI agent at a TinderⓇ hackathon that writes automated unit tests, won the engineering track, and deployed it straight into our CI pipeline. Here’s what we learned.

A Non-Engineer’s Translation Guide to Living With One

Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff shares some favorite moments from when workplace language collides with real life, and what it reveals about engineering culture at its best.

Tinder API Style Guide: Part 2

How Tinder unified fragmented data models into a single, governed Protobuf system to improve reliability, consistency, and developer velocity at scale.

How Tinder® Uses AI to Rank Profile Photos

An inside look at how Tinder’s VLM-based system reframes photo ranking through pairwise comparisons to improve matches, likes, and meaningful connections.

How to Hire a Great CTO (Even If You’re Not a Technologist)

Finding a CTO who balances technical depth with leadership is tough. Read how Tinder’s CEO approached the search, prioritizing hands-on experience, AI readiness, and cultural fit.

Boosting iOS Development Efficiency With AI: Practical Techniques for a Large-Scale Codebase

Learn about the concrete prompting strategies and techniques that are effective for iOS development at scale.

Recapping Our Recent Panel Discussion on AI as Your Strategic Partner

How We Decomposed Tinder’s Monolith

Monoliths are frustrating for developers, and they can have a profound effect on your organization; they slow down your team and your ability to drive important changes in your codebase.

How On-Device AI Models Find Your Best Tinder Profile Photos

At Tinder, the quality of your profile photos is paramount. However, asking users to manually sift through their entire camera roll to select images that best represent them can be an overwhelming task.

Tinder’s migration to Elasticsearch 8

Tinder ES plugin is a crucial in-house technology that allows us to run complex, observable, efficient and testable scoring algorithms written in Java.

Sharing Tinder’s latest contributions to the open source community

At first glance, Tinder might seem like a simple application. But when you look under the hood, there are a lot of complexities to consider when building the experience that our users know and love today.

How Tinder Eased Development Pain With Ignis

Latency in the development loop caused a significant bottleneck in our feature development and reduced overall stability. That's where Ignis came in.

Tinder API Style Guide-Part 1

Learn how we streamlined and updated our methodologies to maintain consistency and scalability of the Tinder app.

Identifying vulnerabilities in GitHub Actions & AWS OIDC Configurations

Through this blog, we will share examples of vulnerable configuration, case-studies with external organizations, mitigation examples, and abuse identification techniques.

Tinder Achieves ISO/IEC 27701:2019 Certification, Setting New Privacy Standards for Dating Apps

As the most popular dating app in the world, millions of people trust Tinder with data that helps us create a positive online dating experience for them.

Building Obsidian, Tinder’s Design System

This post explores the creation of Obsidian, Tinder's design system.

Melina, Knowledge Manager: Collaboration is our Culture

"It’s fun to be a part of something that so many people use every day and to be a part of something that’s relevant for everyday people."

Quang, Android Release Manager: Learnings from Start-up to Today

"A lot of work, a lot of late nights. We didn’t really leave. But it was fun."

Jonathan, Site Reliability Engineer: Tales from the Trenches

"At Tinder, you have to be innovative and keep moving forward."

Stephanie, Lead Product Designer: from Tindership to Leadership

"Whenever I talk to people about my job, there’s always a little light that shines in their eyes."

Supporting Working Parents and Work-Life Balance at Tinder

As a working parent, it can be hard to find balance between spending time in an exciting role at work and being with your family. But it’s a lot easier when your company understands your specific needs and outlook.

Tinder Off-Duty: How we use our PTO & Wellness Days

At Tinder, we believe balanced lives make for stronger teams and better work. When we’re not working on building new features for our members, our team is taking advantage of our benefits and utilizing our unlimited PTO.

How to Categorize and Prevent Risks of Sensitive Links in URLScan

Learn how we mitigate and prevent accidental indexing of sensitive links.

How Black@Tinder Uplifts Team Members and Advances Change

At Tinder, diversity and inclusion is more than just a talking point—it’s a central practice.

Celebrating Latinx Heritage at Tinder

This Latinx Heritage Month, we sat down with Shelina and Thelma, leaders of our Latinx@Tinder ERG, to talk about their experiences as employees and community leaders at Tinder.

Meet our 2022 Tindership Interns!

There are internships and then there’s the Tindership program. Our interns spend their summer as part of our team, making a real impact on our business of keeping the magic of human connection alive.

Tinder Team Members Share What it Takes to Make Sparks Fly Around the World

We asked Tinder teammates how the app fits into the landscape of human connection where they live and work. Here’s what they had to say.

Sharon Halperin on How Femgineers are Fueling Success at Tinder

Tinder's Femgineers foster growth, create conversations, and provide key skills that emphasize the crucial impact of women who are engineers at Tinder.

How Blind Date is Bringing Back the Allure of the Unknown

Tinder’s Z Team, a group of engineers, product managers, marketers, designers, and data scientists focused on developing experiences for Gen Z, has been working on new ways to create genuine connections on the app.

Chris on How Making Connections Works Best When You Can Be Your True Self

Making connections works best when you can be your true self. Chris Tirabassi, Senior Product Designer at Tinder, shares how Tinder provided him with a place to be himself. Now, he’s making sure the app continues to be a safe space for everyone.

Meet the Tinder Machine Learning Team: Carlos Gutierrez

Joining Tinder nearly three years ago, Carlos uses his knowledge to sequence streams of information, translating his findings into insights that feed into business rules and strategies to fight abuse on the app.

Meet the Tinder Machine Learning Team | Steven Brotz

Machine Learning Software Engineer Steven Brotz first arrived at Tinder as an engineering intern in the summer of 2018, before his senior year of college. After graduation, the unique environment that the Tinder app provides for curious engineers drew him back in full time.

Not just for Engineers: Hackathons are Core to Tinder’s Culture

A hackathon is always exciting for creative-minded engineers, but at Tinder, hackathons are celebrated across the company.

Building the Magic of Human Connection: Tinder’s CTO on Why Teamwork Matters Most

CTO Tom Jacques shares what makes this team unique and why he believes relationships are key to a thriving workplace.

From the Ivory Tower to the Data Lab: How I Found Meaning Working at Tinder

Jennifer Flashman never thought her Ph.D. in sociology would lead to a data science job at Tinder.