Senior Software Engineer - Search Platform

Algolia; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading tech company is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join the Metis team, focusing on distributed systems and AI-driven search solutions. You will design, develop, and maintain a cloud-based architecture while ensuring system reliability. Ideal candidates should have experience in operating distributed systems, working with large datasets, and a commitment to high code quality. This role offers the flexibility to work fully remote or hybrid from the office in London.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and operating distributed systems in production.
• Experience working with large datasets and high traffic.
• Rigor in high code quality, automated testing, and other engineering best practices.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to design and development of the Metis system.
• Be responsible for operations for the Metis system.
• Ensure the quality and soundness of the system.

Skills

Distributed systems

Large datasets

High code quality

Automated testing

Spoken and written English

Tools

Go

Kubernetes

Job description

At Algolia, we’re proud to be a pioneer and market leader in AI Search, empowering 17,000+ businesses to deliver blazing-fast, predictive search and browse experiences at internet scale. Every week, we power over 30 billion search requests — four times more than Microsoft Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Yandex, and DuckDuckGo combined.

In 2021, we raised $150 million in Series D funding, quadrupling our valuation to $2.25 billion. This strong foundation enables us to keep investing in our market-leading platform and serving incredible customers like Under Armour, PetSmart, Stripe, Gymshark, and Walgreens.

Algolia was built to help users deliver an intuitive search-as-you-type experience on their websites and mobile apps. We provide a search API used by thousands of customers in more than 100 countries. Billions of search queries are answered every month thanks to the code we push into production every day.

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join the Metis team. We are responsible for Metis, the cloud-based scalable architecture for NeuralSearch, our AI search engine, which incorporates both keyword and vector search. Metis consists of distributed components which orchestrate the building and storage of indices containing customer data and then querying that data to return search results. The role requires understanding and solving the challenges that come with complex distributed systems.

The team is composed of engineers, most of whom are fully remote, with different skill sets and backgrounds. Your experience, your knowledge and your perspective will add to this diversity and help the team deliver products that make a difference.

YOU WILL:

• Be a key contributor to the design and development of the Metis system
• Be responsible for operations for the Metis system including participation in out-of-hours on-call rota
• Work with a full-remote team, with the option to be either full-remote, hybrid or office based (Paris) yourself
• Be responsible for the quality and soundness of the system
• Share your expertise on distributed systems
• Work with other teams to identify, troubleshoot and resolve high impact issues

YOU MIGHT BE A FIT IF YOU HAVE:

• Experience designing and operating distributed systems in production
• Experience working with large datasets and high traffic
• Rigor in high code quality, automated testing, and other engineering best practices
• Excellent spoken and written English skills
• Experience at our current stage and beyond ($50-200M ARR range, high growth, lots of change and building internal infrastructure).

NICE TO HAVE:

• Experience in Go
• Experience in Kubernetes
• Sensitivity to Site Reliability Engineering

#LI-Remote

FLEXIBLE WORKPLACE STRATEGY:

Algolia’s flexible workplace model is designed to empower all Algolians to fulfill our mission to power search and discovery with ease. We place an emphasis on an individual’s impact, contribution, and output, over their physical location. Algolia is a high-trust environment and many of our team members have the autonomy to choose where they want to work and when.

We have a global presence with offices in Paris, NYC, London, Sydney and Bucharest, however we also offer many of our team members the option to work remotely either as fully remote or hybrid-remote employees. Positions listed as "Remote" are only available for remote work within the specified country. Positions listed within a specific city are only available in that location - depending on the role it may be available with either a hybrid-remote or in-office schedule.

WE’RE LOOKING FOR SOMEONE WHO CAN LIVE OUR VALUES:

• GRIT - Problem-solving and perseverance capability in an ever-changing and growing environment.
• TRUST - Willingness to trust our co-workers and to take ownership.
• CANDOR - Ability to receive and give constructive feedback.
• CARE - Genuine care about other team members, our clients and the decisions we make in the company.
• HUMILITY - Aptitude for learning from others, putting ego aside.

We’re looking for talented, passionate people to help build the world’s best search and discovery technology. We value autonomy, diversity, and collaboration. We’re committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone is respected and supported—regardless of race, age, ancestry, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, color, veteran status, disability, or socioeconomic background.

IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR CANDIDATES - Recruitment Fraud Notice

We’ve recently seen an increase in recruitment scams targeting job seekers. To help protect yourself, please keep the following in mind:

• Our open positions may appear on third-party job boards, but the best way to apply safely is directly through our careers page.
• All genuine communication from Algolia will come from an @algolia.com email address. If you receive an email from someone claiming to work at Algolia who does not have an @algolia.com email address, please do not respond or share any personal information.
• We’ll never ask for payments, purchases, or financial details during the hiring process.

READY TO APPLY?

If you share our values and our enthusiasm for building the world’s best search & discovery technology, we’d love to review your application!