ML Search Engineer (Software Engineer III)

DEPLOY; Birmingham (AL); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

DEPLOY is seeking an Engineering Lead to own the ML/AI Search stack in Birmingham, AL. You will build end-to-end Python services, develop ML inference pipelines, and ship scalable APIs for product discovery used by industrial buyers.

You will work with Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, vector databases, and modern frontend interfaces, while championing CI/CD, testing, and observability across services.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional backend or full-stack engineering with Python/React focus.
• Cloud-native experience designing and deploying applications (GCP preferred).
• Experience building resilient microservices and RESTful/gRPC APIs.
• Strong understanding of containers (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes).
• Mentorship and cross-functional collaboration in agile teams.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy production Python services end-to-end, from retrieval to APIs.
• Build ML inference pipelines, embedding models, and LLM-powered query understanding.
• Write clean, tested Python backends with observability and on-call ownership.
• Drive frontend architecture decisions and reusable component libraries.

Skills

Python

React

Cloud (GCP)

REST APIs

Docker

Kubernetes

Monorepos

Mentorship

Type Annotations

Agile teams

Tools

Elasticsearch

OpenSearch

FAISS

Pinecone

Weaviate

LangChain

Job description

DEPLOY has been retained by a leading industrial parts distributor for an on site role in Birmingham, Alabama. We are looking for an ML Search Engineer (Software Engineer III)

You must be eligible to work in the US without Visa Sponsorship.

ABOUT THE ROLE

• We're building intelligent product search that understands intent, learns from behavior, and gets smarter over time. As a Senior Full Stack Engineer on the ML/AI Search team, you'll design and build both the frontend and backend systems that power product discovery for millions of industrial buyers- from scalable retrieval pipelines, APIs, and Frontend interfaces that make AI accessible.
• This isn't a research role. You'll own the full lifecycle: prototyping ideas, shipping production-grade services on GCP, and iterating based on real user data. Strong Python and React engineering is the foundation- if you also bring experience in search systems, vector databases, or Elasticsearch, you'll hit the ground running from day one.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Build & Ship Search and AI-Powered Systems

• Design, develop, and deploy production Python services end-to-end—from retrieval and ranking pipelines through client-facing APIs.
• Build and integrate ML inference pipelines: embedding models, transformer-based classifiers, LLM-powered query understanding, and reranking services.
• Write clean, well-tested, observable Python backends; own your services through deployment, monitoring, and on-call
• Drive frontend architecture decisions, establishing development standards, and creating reusable component libraries.

Contribute to Search Infrastructure

• Work alongside the Search Architect and ML Architect to implement hybrid retrieval systems combining keyword search, dense vector similarity, and reranking.
• Build and maintain Elasticsearch indexing pipelines, query services, and relevance tuning tooling.
• Integrate vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS or similar) into retrieval workflows—even if this is new territory, you'll learn fast.
• Instrument search pipelines with meaningful metrics: CTR, zero-result rate, latency- feeding the team's A/B experimentation loop.
• Build clean, responsive, and production-ready interfaces from wireframes or Figma designs.

Own the Engineering Bar

• Champion CI/CD, observability, testing, and infrastructure-as-code as non-negotiables, not afterthoughts.
• Lead design sessions with Engineers and Architects; translate product requirements into clean, maintainable technical solutions.
• Participate in code reviews and knowledge-sharing—actively raising the team's collective skill level.

WHAT YOU BRING

Must-Haves

• Strong Python and React foundation: 6+ years of professional backend or full-stack engineering experience with a deep Python/React (e.g., Next.js, Vite.js, Remix.js, Gatsby.js) focus—async patterns, type annotations, testing, and production-grade service/component design.
• Cloud-native experience: Proven experience designing and deploying cloud-native applications (GCP strongly preferred; AWS or Azure considered).
• Hands-on experience building resilient high throughput microservices and RESTful/gRPC APIs.
• Solid understanding of containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), and serverless paradigms.
• Strong grounding in SOLID design principles and software craftsmanship.
• Good communicator who thrives in cross-functional, agile teams alongside ML engineers, architects, and product owners.
• Comfort using AI tools to accelerate development throughput.
• Strong experience of using and managing Monorepos
• Strong understanding of relational (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle) and non-relational databases (e.g., MongoDB, DynamoDB).
• Mentorship: Provide guidance and technical knowledge sharing to mid-level and junior developers.

Strongly Preferred - Search & ML

You don't need all of these on day one—but the more you bring, the faster you'll contribute.

• Search systems: Experience with search platforms:
• Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Solr, or Algolia- index management, query DSL, relevance tuning.
• Vector search: Familiarity with vector search concepts and tooling:
• embeddings, approximate nearest neighbor (ANN), FAISS, Pinecone, Weaviate, or similar.
• Exposure to ML/AI patterns: RAG pipelines, LLM integration, prompt engineering, or fine-tuning workflows.
• Experience with AI orchestration frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, or Google ADK.
• Infrastructure-as-code experience (Terraform, Pulumi, OpenTofu) and mature CI/CD pipeline ownership.

WHO YOU ARE

Fearless Builder

• A working proof-of-concept beats a thousand slide decks. Speed and quality are both non-negotiable.

Relentless Learner

• You pick up new technologies fast and have a genuine eagerness to master whatever comes next.

Architecture-Minded

• You design scalable, fault-tolerant services as second nature and aren't afraid to challenge the status quo.

Ownership-Driven

• Code isn't done until it's tested, documented, and monitored. Your name on a release means something.

Search-Curious

• You may not have built a search system yet—but you're excited by the challenge and ready to go deep.

Team Multiplier

• You give and welcome candid feedback and actively make the people around you better.