Staff Software Engineer - OpenSearch

Optimizely; City of Westminster; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading digital experience optimization company in the UK seeks an experienced engineer to architect and optimize Opensearch indexing and query pipelines. The role includes designing disaster recovery plans and mentoring engineers in search optimization. The ideal candidate holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or engineering and is proficient in technologies such as GraphQL, REST, and Kubernetes. This position is pivotal for delivering high performance to customer digital experiences.

Responsibilities

• Architect, implement, and optimize Opensearch indexing and query pipelines for scalability and reliability.
• Design and maintain backup, disaster recovery, and failover strategies for Opensearch clusters.
• Lead root cause analysis and resolution of complex search-related incidents and performance bottlenecks.
• Drive automation for cluster provisioning, upgrades, and configuration management.
• Mentor engineers on Opensearch internals, query optimization, and troubleshooting.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to translate business requirements into robust search features.
• Own capacity planning and cost optimization for search infrastructure.
• Author technical documentation and best practices for search development and operations.

Education

Bachelor's Degree (Computer Science or engineering preferred)

Tools

GraphQL

REST

OpenSearch

Kubernetes

Terraform

Ansible

Job description

Responsibilities

• Architect, implement, and optimize Opensearch indexing and query pipelines for scalability and reliability.
• Design and maintain backup, disaster recovery, and failover strategies for Opensearch clusters.
• Lead root cause analysis and resolution of complex search-related incidents and performance bottlenecks.
• Drive automation for cluster provisioning, upgrades, and configuration management (e.g., with Terraform, Ansible, or Kubernetes).
• Mentor engineers on Opensearch internals, query optimization, and troubleshooting.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to translate business requirements into robust search features.
• Own capacity planning and cost optimization for search infrastructure.
• Author technical documentation and best practices for search development and operations.

Why this team is critical to Optimizely

Business Impact: Optimizely Graph is the core content delivery and search service powering the SaaS version of our Content Management System (CMS). Our customers rely on Graph for high performance and advanced query capabilities to deliver exceptional user experiences. Graph's reliability and speed directly impact their business success.

High Visibility & Innovation: Our roadmap prioritizes innovative content delivery and search features, placing search and AI at the forefront of our service offering. This focus differentiates us from competitors and empowers our customers to build cutting‑edge web and mobile applications.

Shape the Future of Digital Experiences: The team influences how customers engage their audiences and achieve business objectives through innovative search and content delivery experiences.

Technologies we work with

• GraphQL, REST
• Cloudflare workers, Kubernetes
• OpenSearch

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree (Computer Science or engineering preferred) or equivalent work experience.

About Optimizely

Optimizely is on a mission to help people unlock their digital potential by enabling marketing and product teams to create and optimize digital experiences across channels. With Optimizely One, we offer a fully SaaS, fully decoupled, and highly composable solution.