Senior Java Engineer - Hybrid, Scalable Search Platform

SAP SE; Palo Alto (CA); Hybrid; USD 149,000 - 253,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Competitive compensation

Job summary

SAP SE is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to lead the design and evolution of a state-of-the-art Search Platform that combines traditional information retrieval with modern AI and LLM-driven capabilities. You will influence architecture across teams, deliver low-latency search solutions, and drive improvements in relevance, performance, and scalability from Palo Alto or nearby locations.

You will mentor engineers, partner with Product, Data Science, and AI teams, and contribute to end-to-end

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field
• 8+ years of experience in backend or distributed systems development
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with large-scale data processing or streaming systems
• Deep expertise in Java (Java 11/17+) and JVM ecosystem
• Expert-level knowledge of Spring Framework (Boot, MVC, Security, Retry)
• Strong understanding of concurrency, multi-threading, and performance optimization
• Strong experience with search technologies (Solr / Elasticsearch / OpenSearch / Lucene)
• Hands-on experience with Learning to Rank (LTR), query understanding, and personalization
• Extensive experience with Apache Beam, Spark, or Storm
• Strong understanding of event-driven architectures and streaming pipelines
• Knowledge of processing semantics (exactly-once, at-least-once), windowing, and state management
• Strong expertise in NoSQL systems (preferably Cassandra)
• Experience with multi-tenant architectures and high-throughput systems
• Understanding of consistency models and distributed data design
• Familiarity with document stores and schema design
• Production experience with Kafka or similar systems
• Understanding of event sourcing, CQRS, and backpressure handling
• Experience with OAuth and service-to-service authentication
• Knowledge of encryption (in transit and at rest) and KMS
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and containerized environments
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, Maven)
• Strong experience with unit, integration, and distributed system testing
• Familiarity with JUnit, Mockito, and embedded test frameworks
• Understanding of testing strategies for distributed systems
• Drives technical vision and architectural decision-making
• Balances immediate delivery with long-term platform evolution
• Demonstrates strong ownership and accountability
• Mentors and uplifts team through technical leadership
• Collaborates effectively across engineering, product, and data science
• Operates with a startup mindset—speed with scalability
• Passion for solving complex search and relevance challenges at scale

Responsibilities

• Architect and build highly scalable, low-latency distributed search systems
• Design and optimize large-scale indexing pipelines and retrieval systems
• Drive hybrid search architecture (BM25 + vector search + LLM-based reranking)
• Lead design and development of backend services and REST APIs using Java and Spring
• Build real-time and batch data pipelines using streaming frameworks
• Design event-driven architectures leveraging message brokers such as Kafka
• Improve search relevance and ranking quality using ML/NLP and LTR techniques
• Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks across indexing and query layers
• Define search quality metrics, evaluation frameworks, and experimentation strategies
• Ensure system reliability, scalability, and fault tolerance using distributed system best practices
• Own end-to-end lifecycle of microservices (design, development, deployment, operations)
• Implement security best practices (authentication, authorization, data protection)
• Lead technical design discussions and influence architectural decisions
• Mentor engineers through code reviews, design guidance, and best practices
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Data Science, and AI teams

Skills

Java

Spring

Concurrency

Search platform

ML/NLP

LTR

Kafka

Kubernetes

CI/CD

JUnit/Mockito

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Solr

Elasticsearch

OpenSearch

Lucene

Job description

SAP SE is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to lead the design and evolution of a state-of-the-art Search Platform that combines traditional information retrieval with modern AI and LLM-driven capabilities. You will influence architecture across teams, deliver low-latency search solutions, and drive improvements in relevance, performance, and scalability from Palo Alto or nearby locations.

You will mentor engineers, partner with Product, Data Science, and AI teams, and contribute to end-to-end