Senior AI Search engineer(m/f/x)
About this role
Enterprises struggle with modern commerce discovery as shoppers type full sentences and AI agents call APIs instead of humans, requiring advanced semantic and hybrid retrieval systems. Commercetools needs a Senior AI Search Engineer on the Discovery Team to build the retrieval layer behind product discovery for demanding global commerce brands. Working across every layer from query understanding down to the vector index, the successful candidate will tackle complex challenges like query costs, speed, and multi-tenant scalability.
Joining a worldwide distributed team, the engineer will help bring semantic and hybrid retrieval to general availability while designing search functionalities in a PaaS ecommerce Scala backend. Ideal candidates bring a background in building search solutions on top of engines like Elasticsearch and thrive in an environment of trust, teamwork, and continuous learning.
What you will do
- Design and implement search functionalities within a PaaS ecommerce Scala backend.
- Develop scalable features within a multi-tenant architecture to support demanding commerce brands.
- Analyze user needs and collaborate on technical approaches with peers.
- Test software components for usability, functionality, and performance in coordination with Product Management and DevOps.
- Participate in on-call rotations for production systems alongside a worldwide distributed team.
What you need
- Bring five or more years of experience as a software engineer working in search.
- Demonstrate hands-on experience building search solutions on top of engines such as Elasticsearch, Solr, OpenSearch, or similar.
- Show an aspiration to constantly improve, learn new technologies, and grasp new concepts.
- Communicate fluently in English to collaborate effectively within international teams.
- Possess a genuine curiosity for using AI tools to work smarter and put them into practice.
Nice to have
- Experience using modern search stacks and strategies to optimize search relevance including Vector and Hybrid Search, Learning to rank, and Re-ranker.
- Experience developing REST APIs and knowledge of scalable event-driven architectures like queues, notification topics, sharding, replication, load balancing, and failover.
- Experience working with Scala or other functional programming languages.
- Experience with infrastructure work and other technologies like Helm, Kubernetes, and Rust.
Benefits
- Comprehensive health benefits for employees and 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 providing additional fully paid weeks of parental leave on top of government-provided leave.
- Equity participation program allowing employees to share in company success.
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
What is the remote or hybrid work policy for this role?
This role is hybrid, requiring three days a week spent in the Munich, Berlin, London, or Valencia office.
What kind of architecture and backend will I be working with?
The position involves designing and implementing search functionalities in a PaaS ecommerce Scala backend within a scalable and multi-tenant architecture.
What are the expectations regarding production support?
Team members take part in on-call rotations with a worldwide distributed team for production systems.
What search engine experience is required?
Candidates need experience with building search solutions on top of engines such as Elasticsearch, Solr, OpenSearch, or similar, with Elasticsearch being preferred.