Senior Backend Engineer, Search

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior Backend Engineer, Search based in United States.

This is a senior engineering opportunity focused on building and scaling high-performance search infrastructure for a rapidly growing productivity platform.

You will work at the intersection of backend engineering, information retrieval, and AI to help users find exactly what they need in real time.

The role centers on Postgres and OpenSearch-based services, with a strong emphasis on real-time indexing and search serving.

You will improve relevance, accuracy, latency, and scalability while developing measurement frameworks that continuously raise search quality.

You will also contribute to vector and semantic search capabilities that enable next-generation, AI-powered experiences.

Working closely with backend, AI, and product teams, you will help integrate search capabilities into increasingly sophisticated product experiences.

This is a hands-on role where your technical decisions will have a direct impact on the performance and usability of a global software platform.

Accountabilities:

• Design, build, and scale robust backend search solutions capable of supporting a rapidly growing user base and high-volume workloads.
• Optimize search relevance, accuracy, query performance, and response times to deliver fast and highly useful results.
• Improve real-time indexing and ingestion pipelines so that search results remain accurate and up to date.
• Develop measurement frameworks, quality metrics, and evaluation processes to assess and continuously improve search performance.
• Build and enhance vector search and semantic search capabilities using modern embedding-based technologies.
• Optimize query parsing, indexing strategies, relevance tuning, and search-serving infrastructure.
• Collaborate with AI, backend engineering, and product teams to integrate search capabilities into new and existing product experiences.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex search infrastructure and performance issues at scale.
• Contribute to architectural decisions that ensure search systems remain reliable, scalable, and performant under heavy workloads.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• 5+ years of professional experience as a search engineer or in a closely related backend engineering role.
• Strong hands-on production experience with OpenSearch or Elasticsearch; experience with Solr is also relevant.
• Demonstrated experience building and operating high-scale, real-time data ingestion and search-serving systems in backend environments.
• Proven ability to optimize query parsing, indexing, relevance tuning, and search performance.
• Experience developing methods and metrics for measuring and improving search quality.
• Strong understanding of search ranking, relevance algorithms, and information retrieval principles.
• Experience with vector embeddings and semantic search implementations is highly valued.
• Backend development experience with TypeScript is a plus.
• Experience applying machine learning or natural language processing techniques to improve search relevance is advantageous.
• Strong problem-solving, system design, and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across engineering and product teams.
• Demonstrated AI fluency and willingness to incorporate AI tools and techniques into day-to-day engineering work.

Benefits:

• Fully remote opportunity within the United States.
• Senior-level opportunity with significant ownership over core search infrastructure and technology.
• Opportunity to work on high-scale backend systems at the intersection of search, AI, and productivity technology.
• Direct influence on search quality, platform performance, and next-generation AI-powered user experiences.
• Collaborative environment with close partnership across backend engineering, AI, and product teams.
• Opportunity to work with modern search technologies including OpenSearch, real-time indexing, vector search, and semantic retrieval.
• Career growth through ownership of complex technical challenges and high-impact engineering initiatives.
• Inclusive, equal-opportunity workplace committed to considering qualified candidates fairly.
• Visa sponsorship for engineering and product roles may be considered based on the specific business needs of the role; sponsorship is not guaranteed.