Lead, Search Engineering – OpenSearch & ML (Hybrid)

Moonpig; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay & bonuses

Private healthcare (UK)

Hybrid working

Staff discounts

Job summary

Moonpig Group seeks an Engineering Lead for the Search domain, based in Manchester or London with hybrid flexibility. You’ll lead hands-on technical initiatives, guide a team of engineers, and deepen OpenSearch expertise while staying close to code.

You’ll own backend integration with OpenSearch, build scalable AWS/Terraform-backed infrastructure, and collaborate with Product, Data Science and Design to shape the Search roadmap.

Qualifications

• Strong hands-on experience with OpenSearch, Elasticsearch or comparable search-engine technology, with OpenSearch experience particularly valuable for this role.
• Strong understanding of how search engines work and how search models rank products.
• Strong hands-on software engineering experience, including C#/.NET.
• Experience with AWS serverless, React, TypeScript, GraphQL and Terraform.

Responsibilities

• Write clean, high-quality code and remain hands-on with the day-to-day technical delivery of Search initiatives.
• Own and develop our backend integration with OpenSearch, alongside the wider team.
• Build and maintain scalable, resilient infrastructure using AWS and Terraform.
• Build and maintain customer-facing features using technologies including .NET/C#, React, Node.js, TypeScript and GraphQL.
• Collaborate with engineers and data teams to design and deliver AI/ML-driven features using internal ML inference APIs and external LLMs.

Skills

OpenSearch / Elasticsearch

C#/.NET

AWS

Leadership / Mentoring

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent

Tools

Terraform

React

GraphQL

TypeScript

GitHub / CI/CD

Job description

Moonpig Group seeks an Engineering Lead for the Search domain, based in Manchester or London with hybrid flexibility. You’ll lead hands-on technical initiatives, guide a team of engineers, and deepen OpenSearch expertise while staying close to code.

You’ll own backend integration with OpenSearch, build scalable AWS/Terraform-backed infrastructure, and collaborate with Product, Data Science and Design to shape the Search roadmap.