Lead Software Engineer - AI-Driven Search Platform

Jobtailor; Illinois; On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor is seeking a senior leader to define the long‑term technical vision for our search platform in a fast‑growing ecommerce context. You will mentor engineers, align with product managers and data scientists, and drive architecture decisions for scalable, highly available systems.

Bring expertise in NLP, vector search, personalization, and AI tooling to continuously improve search relevance and performance while delivering measurable KPI improvements across CTR and query distribution.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading technical teams and multiple projects.
• Experience as lead software engineer, architect, or engineering manager.
• Experience with ITSM processes (incident, change, problem).
• Strong communication, organization, and stakeholder management.
• Ability to handle high‑visibility issues and complex problems.
• Experience in eCommerce Search deployments and large‑scale systems.
• Proficiency in Java, Python, or Scala with source control practices.
• Familiarity with AI code generation tools and cloud DevOps.
• Producing and consuming APIs and event streaming experience.

Responsibilities

• Define and implement a long‑term technical vision for the search platform.
• Mentor and guide a team of search engineers through reviews and collaboration.
• Introduce NLP, vector search, and personalization to improve relevance.
• Build searchable systems with KPIs and leverage analytics for performance.
• Partner with product managers, data scientists, and engineering teams.

Skills

Java

Python

Scala

NLP

Vector search

Personalization

AI code generation

Software debugging

Headless frameworks

APIs

Education

Bachelor’s degree or higher

Tools

OpenSearch

Elastic Search

SOLR

Lucene

Coveo

LucidWorks Fusion

Job description

Jobtailor is seeking a senior leader to define the long‑term technical vision for our search platform in a fast‑growing ecommerce context. You will mentor engineers, align with product managers and data scientists, and drive architecture decisions for scalable, highly available systems.

Bring expertise in NLP, vector search, personalization, and AI tooling to continuously improve search relevance and performance while delivering measurable KPI improvements across CTR and query distribution.