Search Engineer
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Nov 3, 2026. First seen by Alion on Jul 12, 2026. Firecrawl scores B on the Alion truth index.
Search Engineer
You'll build the systems that let anyone turn the open web into a search index. Firecrawl's search product is one of our fastest-growing surfaces, and we need engineers who can make crawling, ranking, and retrieval fast, reliable, and cheap at scale. You'll own real infrastructure from day one, not tickets in a backlog.
Salary Range: $235,000-$260,000 USD/year (SF) / $217,000-$233,000 CAD/year (Toronto)
Equity Range: Competitive equity. Details shared during the process.
Location: San Francisco, CA (SF HQ) or Toronto, ON (Toronto Hub). Hybrid, onsite 3+ days a week.
Job Type: Full-Time
Experience: 3+ years building production backend or infra systems
Work Authorization: Open to candidates already authorized to work in the US or Canada. In the US, we also support H-1B transfers, F-1 OPT and STEM OPT, TN (Canada and Mexico), and E-3 (Australia). We’re not able to sponsor new H-1B visas for candidates outside the US. For Canada, we’ll consider work permit sponsorship case by case through our Toronto Hub.
About Firecrawl
Firecrawl is the easiest way to turn the web into data AI agents can use. One API call converts any URL into clean, LLM-ready markdown or structured data. It's the boring-hard problem everyone building with LLMs eventually hits, solved.
In September 2026, we raised a $75M Series B led by Smash Capital, and we're spending it building the largest repository of knowledge in the world. We hit 8 figures in ARR in year one and more than doubled it in year two. We have 192k+ GitHub stars, putting us in the top 40 repositories of all time, and developers, agents, and category-defining AI companies build on us every day. Growth like this is rare, and we're just getting started.
We're a small team punching far above our weight. Everyone here owns a real piece of the product and company, end to end, and runs it themselves. No hiding behind process or headcount.
This is a place for people who want to work at the frontier: an AI company building the infrastructure other AI companies run on, not one bolting AI onto an existing product. We move fast, go deep, and are building the tools superintelligence will rely on to gather data from the web. That library is called Alexandria, and it starts now.
What You'll Do
Design and build the crawling, indexing, and retrieval systems behind Firecrawl Search
Push down latency and cost per query while search volume grows
Improve ranking quality and freshness for LLM-driven retrieval
Own services end to end: design, ship, monitor, and iterate in production
Work directly with the Head of Search and the rest of the search team on the roadmap
What We're Looking For
You've built and operated backend or distributed systems at real scale
You care about latency, cost, and correctness in equal measure
You're comfortable owning ambiguous problems and turning them into shipped systems
You move fast and close the loop. You'd rather ship, measure, and iterate than perfect on paper
What We're NOT Looking For
Someone who needs a fully-specced ticket to start
Someone who wants to specialize narrowly and hand off everything else
Someone who optimizes for process over shipping
A Note On Pace
We operate at an absurd level of urgency because the window for what we're building won't stay open forever. If that excites you, keep reading. If it doesn't, no hard feelings, but this role probably isn't for you.
Benefits & Perks
Available to all employees
Salary that makes sense: $235,000-$260,000 USD/year (SF) / $217,000-$233,000 CAD/year (Toronto), based on impact, not tenure
Own a piece: Gain competitive equity in what you're helping build
Generous PTO: 15 days mandatory, anything after 24 days, just ask (holidays excluded). Take the time you need to recharge
Parental leave: 12 weeks fully paid, for all parents
Wellness stipend: $100 USD/month for the gym, therapy, massages, or whatever keeps you human
Learning & Development: Expense up to $1,000 USD/year toward anything that helps you grow professionally
Team offsites: A change of scenery, minus the trust falls
Sabbatical: 3 paid months off after 4 years, do something fun and new
Available to US-based full-time employees
Full coverage, no red tape: Medical, dental, and vision (100% for employees, 50% for partner and kids). No weird loopholes, just care that works
Life & Disability insurance: Employer-paid basic life and AD&D, short-term disability, and long-term disability. Coverage for life's curveballs
Virtual care and a health guide: Teladoc for the couch doctor visit, plus Rightway to answer coverage questions and fight billing errors for you
Mental health: Talkspace, therapy and psychiatry on your schedule
Fertility and family building: Carrot, covering you and your partner
EAP: Free confidential counseling, legal and financial consults, and online will prep through Guardian
401(k) plan: Retirement might be a ways off, but future-you will thank you
Pre-tax benefits: HSA, FSA, and commuter benefits to help your wallet out a bit
Supplemental options: Extra life and AD&D, accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, plus pet, legal, and identity protection through MetLife
Available to Canada-based full-time employees
Full coverage, no red tape: Extended health, dental, and vision through Manulife (Diamond, the top tier), 100% employer-paid for you, your partner, and your kids
Life & Disability insurance: Employer-paid life, AD&D, short-term disability, and long-term disability. Coverage for life's curveballs
Virtual care: Dialogue Premium, so you can see a doctor or nurse from your couch, any hour
Mental health: Talkspace Elite, therapy and psychiatry on your schedule
Fertility and family building: Carrot, covering you and your partner
Retirement: Group RRSP through Wealthsimple, so future-you can thank you
Available to SF-based employees
SF HQ perks: Snacks, drinks, team lunches, intense ping pong, and peak startup energy
E-Bike transportation: A loaner electric bike to get you around the city, on us
Available to Toronto-based employees
Toronto Hub perks: Snacks, drinks, team lunches, glass-walled views down University Avenue, and a home base steps from Union Station
Transit, covered: A PRESTO card loaded for GO Transit, subway, and streetcar, plus station parking if you drive to the train. Winter-proof, on us
Interview Process
Application Review: Send us your work and a quick note on why this excites you. Show us what you've built: search systems, indexing pipelines, ranking improvements. We care about what you've shipped, not where you went to school.
Intro Chat (~25 min): A quick conversation to get to know each other before we go deep. We'll talk about what you've been working on, what drew you to Firecrawl, and what you're looking for in your next role. Time for your questions too.
Technical Chat (~45 min): We'll dig into a real problem from our world (crawling at scale, ranking quality, or driving down cost per query) and talk through how you'd approach it. Come ready to think out loud. We care how you reason, not whether you memorized the answer.
Founder Chat (~25 min): Culture, pace, ownership, and how you like to work. Time for your questions too.
Paid Work Trial (~40 Hours): Work with the search team on a real, scoped piece of the product, paid at a contractor rate. It's the truest signal for both sides. You see what building at Firecrawl actually feels like, and we see how you ship. Remote-friendly, and we'll flex around your current commitments.
Decision: We move fast after the trial.
If you want to build search infrastructure that serves the whole web at a cost that shouldn't be possible, you should join us.
Apply now.