About this role
The Discovery Team at commercetools builds the retrieval layer behind product discovery for demanding commerce brands, powering semantic and hybrid retrieval systems as shopping behaviors shift toward full sentences and AI agents. Engineers on this team work across every layer from query understanding to vector indices, ensuring searches remain fast, affordable, and measurable across enterprise catalogs.
Someone stepping into this position will design search functionalities within a Scala backend, tackle multi-tenant architecture challenges, and participate in production on-call rotations alongside a distributed global group. A strong candidate is a creative problem-solver with a background in search engineering who enjoys simplifying complex challenges and collaborating within a trust-based environment.
What you will do
- Design and implement search functionalities in a PaaS ecommerce Scala backend.
- Develop solutions within a scalable and multi-tenant architecture.
- Analyze user needs and discuss technical approaches with colleagues.
- Test software components regarding usability, functionality, and performance.
- Collaborate closely with Product Management and DevOps teams.
- Take part in on-call rotations with a worldwide distributed team for production systems.
What you need
- Bring five or more years of experience as a software engineer working in search.
- Demonstrate experience with building search solutions on top of engines such as Elasticsearch, Solr, OpenSearch, or similar technologies.
- Possess an aspiration to constantly improve and learn new technologies and concepts.
- Communicate fluently in English to work effectively within international teams.
- Show AI aptitude through a genuine curiosity for using AI tools to work smarter and a drive to learn and apply them.
Nice to have
- Experience using modern search stacks and strategies to optimize search relevance including vector and hybrid search, learning to rank, and re-rankers
- Experience developing REST APIs and knowledge of scalable event-driven architectures including queues, notification topics, sharding, replication, load balancing, and failover
- Experience working with Scala or other functional programming languages
- Experience with infrastructure work and technologies like Helm, Kubernetes, and Rust
Benefits
- Comprehensive health benefits for you and your dependents, including access to OpenUp for personalized mental health support
- Learning and development opportunities including an annual learning budget, self-paced learning platforms, language training, coaching, mentorship, and leadership programs
- Family Leave Plus offering additional fully paid weeks of parental leave on top of government-provided leave
- Equity participation program to share in company success
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
What is the remote policy for this role?
This role is hybrid, with three days a week spent in the Munich, Berlin, London, or Valencia office.
What kind of search engine experience is required?
Candidates must have experience building search solutions on top of engines such as Elasticsearch, Solr, OpenSearch, or similar tools, with Elasticsearch being preferred.
What team will I be joining?
You will join the Discovery Team, which builds the retrieval layer behind product discovery for demanding commerce brands.
What programming languages and frameworks are used?
The backend is built in Scala as a PaaS ecommerce system, and additional technologies mentioned in the stack include Helm, Kubernetes, and Rust.