Senior Staff Search Engineer

As a Staff Search Engineer, you will play a key role in designing and scaling real-time search infrastructure. This platform powers creator discovery across tens of millions of profiles and billions of pieces of content, making search performance and reliability critical.

In this position, you’ll help architect and maintain large-scale search systems, build high-performance APIs using Go/Java, and ensure that our search services remain fast, scalable, and dependable as the platform continues to grow.

This role combines hands-on engineering work with technical leadership, contributing to architecture decisions and supporting other engineers in building a world-class search experience.

Core Technologies: Go or Java, TypeScript, Elasticsearch, AWS (CloudWatch, SQS, Lambda), MSSQL, AWS Redshift

Location: 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝘀𝗮𝘄 (Hybrid), UoP

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain backend systems that support evolving product requirements while ensuring high reliability and performance.
• Contribute throughout the entire product lifecycle, from design and development to deployment, optimization, and scaling.
• Architect and manage Elasticsearch environments to support high-volume data indexing and search performance.
• Work closely with product managers, architects, and engineering teammates to translate business needs into technical solutions.
• Maintain strong engineering standards by writing clean, maintainable, and well-tested code.
• Participate in code reviews, system design discussions, and ongoing improvements to development processes.
• Encourage ownership and accountability across the engineering team.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software development experience with a strong technical foundation.

• At least 3 years of hands-on experience with Elasticsearch or similar search technologies.
• Experience designing systems that handle large-scale data and high traffic.
• Strong understanding of Elasticsearch architecture and cloud environments (AWS preferred).
• Proven experience in Go or Java development.
• Solid understanding of software engineering fundamentals including OOP, database concepts (both relational and NoSQL), and network communication.
• Experience building REST APIs, working with web frameworks, testing tools, and version control systems such as Git.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and Agile development practices.
• Ability to communicate effectively in English in a distributed team.

Nice-to-Have Experience

• Backend engineering experience in at least one of the following languages: Python, PHP, Node.js.
• Hands-on experience or certifications with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Knowledge of orchestration and containerization technologies (e.g., Kubernetes).
• Curiosity and enthusiasm for continuous learning and emerging technologies.