Senior Search Engineer (Applied Search / AI Search)

iTEAMly; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Multisport card

Job summary

iTEAMly is seeking a Senior Search Engineer to design, build, and optimize advanced search systems that blend traditional, semantic, and hybrid approaches. You will drive relevance and quality across search experiences and own features from concept to production.

You will work with a modern stack and collaborate with product and engineering teams to improve performance and scalability, turning experiments into production-ready solutions.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of commercial software engineering experience building or optimizing search systems.
• Practical knowledge of traditional search, semantic search, and hybrid search.
• Experience with search engines such as OpenSearch, Elasticsearch, Vespa, or similar technologies.
• Understanding of search relevance, ranking, retrieval strategies, and performance optimization.
• Experience experimenting with and evaluating different search approaches.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize search solutions, focusing on relevance, accuracy, and search quality.
• Work with traditional, semantic, and hybrid search approaches.
• Experiment with different search strategies, evaluate results, and continuously improve performance.
• Take ownership of search-related features, from technical decisions to production implementation.
• Help the team make informed decisions about search technologies and architecture.
• Share practical knowledge and contribute to engineering standards.

Skills

Search engineering

OpenSearch/Elasticsearch

Ranking optimization

Independent worker

Product mindset

Tools

OpenSearch

Elasticsearch

Vespa

Job description

About the Role

We are looking for a Senior Search Engineer with strong hands-on expertise in building and improving search systems. This is a new role focused on improving search relevance and quality by combining traditional search, semantic search, and hybrid search approaches. We need someone who has already worked on similar challenges, can bring practical knowledge to the team, and knows how to turn experimentation into working solutions.

What You'll Do

• Design, develop, and optimize search solutions, focusing on relevance, accuracy, and search quality.
• Work with traditional, semantic, and hybrid search approaches.
• Experiment with different search strategies, evaluate results, and continuously improve performance.
• Take ownership of search-related features, from technical decisions to production implementation.
• Help the team make informed decisions about search technologies and architecture.
• Share practical knowledge and contribute to engineering standards.

What We're Looking For

• 6+ years of commercial experience in software engineering, including hands-on experience building, implementing, or optimizing search systems.
• Practical knowledge of traditional search, semantic search, and hybrid search.
• Experience with search engines such as OpenSearch, Elasticsearch, Vespa, or similar technologies.
• Understanding of search relevance, ranking, retrieval strategies, and performance optimization.
• Experience experimenting with and evaluating different search approaches.
• Ability to work independently, challenge existing solutions, and take ownership of technical decisions.
• Product-oriented mindset and a collaborative approach to problem-solving.

Nice to Have

• Experience integrating LLMs, embeddings, or vector search into production applications.
• Background in companies developing search products or search-heavy platforms.
• Experience evaluating or migrating between search technologies.

What We Offer

• You will shape the search engineering area by improving search relevance and quality.
• Ownership of technical decisions and freedom to propose better approaches.
• You will share practical knowledge and contribute to engineering standards while working with the team.
• Practical AI and search challenges, with room for experimentation.
• Multisport card.

Recruitment process

• Application review
• Interview conversation
• Discussion of your experience with search systems and approach to search challenges