Senior Search Engineer | Elasticsearch

Kaufland e-commerce; Berlin; Hybrid; EUR 90.000 - 135.000; Vollzeit

Benefits dieser Stelle

Urban Sports Club

Instahelp access

30 days vacation

Pluxee restaurant vouchers

Deutschlandticket

Employee discount Kaufland.de

Free hardware (Mac/Lenovo)

Language learning program

360-degree feedback

Buddy program

Zusammenfassung

Kaufland e-commerce in Germany seeks a Senior Search Engineer to elevate our Elasticsearch-powered search. You will refine relevance, enrich ingestion, and index data from multiple sources to support fast, scalable queries across a large catalog.

You will operate, monitor, and improve the Elasticsearch stack, write well-tested code, and participate in A/B tests with measurable success metrics. You will also mentor teammates and contribute to a culture of performance and resilience.

Qualifikationen

• 7+ years of experience in search engineering.
• Experience with distributed search engines and production-grade deployments.
• Ability to run, monitor, debug, and operate Elasticsearch clusters and related apps.
• Preferable experience with A/B testing for validation and metrics.

Aufgaben

• Lead Elasticsearch improvements and relevance tuning.
• Improve ingestion architecture and indexing strategies across sources.
• Ensure data quality and efficient queries in a microservice environment.
• Collaborate to map, deploy, and monitor search features at scale.
• Experiment with semantic search, NLP, vectors and hybrid search on roadmap.
• Mentor teammates and share knowledge to reduce bus factor.
• Communicate findings with clear metrics and validations.

Kenntnisse

Search engineering

Distributed search

English proficiency

A/B testing

Tools

Elasticsearch

Kubernetes

gRPC

Typescript

Node.js

MongoDB

Kafka

DataDog

Jobbeschreibung

Your tasks – this is what awaits you in detail

• As a Senior Search Engineer (all genders) – Elasticsearch your goal is to bring our search to the next level for our customers
• Improving our relevance: Writing faster queries, improving data quality of ingested data and by making decisions on better vs. worse relevancy – you understand our searches inside out to make and share informed decisions
• Enriching our ingestion architecture: Consuming change events, updating Elasticsearch mappings and indexing into new fields, ensuring we are able to index into a single document from multiple sources
• Efficient integration: We are not alone in a huge stack like this – this can be enhanced by better mapping, faster retrieval of recently changed data or adding a field, so we can boost our searches more efficiently
• Data modelling: Understanding its implications and effects on indexing and querying
• Performance enhancement: You are always on the lookout, keeping our search speed as fast as possible
• Safety first: With everything you touch and design, you keep resiliency in mind as a key theme in a microservice environment. You know what circuit breakers and bulk heads are and only use caches when they make sense. You favour exponential backoff over CrashLoopBackoff – a lot!
• Our team tech stack consists of Kubernetes, gRPC, Typescript, the latest Node.js major version, Elasticsearch, a bit of MongoDB, Kafka and last but not least, we are using DataDog for monitoring

Your profile – this is what we expect from you

• You have relevant experience of 7+ years as a Search Engineer
• You know how a (distributed) search engine works and have gained experience with one of the more well known search engines in the market
• You bring the skills to run, monitor, debug, and operate our Elasticsearch cluster and applications and always write well tested and reviewed code
• You don’t believe, you know: You do not guess and are well equipped with tangible facts and figures, we run A/B tests for validation and expect you to come up with proper metrics of success and failure for a search feature
• You are curious about the latest developments in tech and the search space in general (semantic search, NLP, LLMs, vectors, hybrid search, machine learning are all on our roadmap, especially with performance in mind)
• We’re a team and do not appreciate a bus factor of 1: You have the desire to help others, share your knowledge and mentor others
• You are willing to go the extra mile to make your team successful, you give honest feedback, able to discuss, commit and execute
• You have excellent written and spoken English skills

What we offer

• Create your own work-life balance: You have the flexibility to choose between working remotely (within Germany) or from one of our locations in Cologne, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf, or in Berlin!
• Urban Sports Club and RSG Group Fitness Studios: Get top deals for fitness, swimming, yoga and more
• Mental Well-Being: We support you on your well-being journey with special offerings such as Instahelp, the digital platform for online psychological counseling
• Vacation & Sabbatical: Enjoy 30 days of vacation per year and the opportunity to take a sabbatical once you have been part of the team for a certain period!
• Option for Pluxee restaurant vouchers: Buy Pluxee vouchers through us and benefit from tax-advantaged meal allowances!
• ‘Deutschlandticket’: We subsidize your train season ticket for more mobility
• Employee Discount: You will receive a monthly coupon for Kaufland.de
• Free choice of hardware: Mac or Lenovo, it’s up to you
• Boost your growth: Benefit from our online language learning programs, diverse in-house training, and our automated 360‑degree feedback
• This is who we are: Our dynamic culture combines flat hierarchies, a start‑up mentality, an international team of over 65 nationalities, and the strength of the Schwarz Group to provide you an agile and secure working environment.
• We are team players: From day one, you will connect not only with your team but also with others through our digital onboarding journey, the buddy program, and regular team and company events, all‑hands meetings, powerful mornings, and much more!