Senior Software Engineer, Search

Vannevarlabs; United States; Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 215,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

Remote friendly

Unlimited PTO

401(k) match

Wellbeing stipends

Military leave compensation

Parental leave

Job summary

Vannevar is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to lead search and information retrieval efforts for our flagship platform. You will design strategies around full-text search, vector databases, NLP, and ranking to surface mission-critical information efficiently.

The role requires 7+ years in backend development and 3+ years in search/IR, with hands-on Elasticsearch/OpenSearch experience and strong leadership and communication skills. U.S.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend software development experience.
• 3+ years in search, information retrieval, or related fields.
• Expertise in information retrieval, NLP, and machine learning.

Responsibilities

• Design and adapt the technical strategy for search within Vannevar’s products.
• Improve search latency and relevance.
• Collaborate with product engineers, designers, and mission strategists to translate user needs into data-informed search innovations.
• Research and apply emerging technologies to improve index quality, freshness, and retrieval performance.

Skills

Backend development

Search & IR

NLP

ML

Leadership & comms

Analytical thinking

Problem solving

Tools

Elasticsearch

OpenSearch

Job description

Vannevar builds AI systems for the Department of War's most consequential missions. We have 125 deployments across every branch and combatant command spanning our core platform and five distinct products. An an example of how we work, when major combat operations started with Iran, we fielded a new product supporting 24/7 operations and 9,000+ users in three months.

About the role

Search is at the heart of Vannevar’s flagship platform and agentic workflows. We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer, with substantial knowledge and passion for search and information retrieval, to drive innovation in this space. In this role, you will work directly with our ML and product teams to advance a state-of-the-art search system that fundamentally drives our users’ ability to surface mission critical information.

What you’ll do

• Design and adapt the technical strategy for search within Vannevar’s products, including how we leverage full-text search, vector databases, LLMs, NLP, and relevance algorithms
• Improve both search latency and relevance
• Collaborate with product engineers, designers, and mission strategists to translate user needs into data-informed search innovations
• Research and apply emerging technologies, trends and best practices in the search/information retrieval domain to improve index quality, freshness, and retrieval performance

What we’re looking for

• You have 7+ years of experience in backend software development, with 3+ years in search, information retrieval, or related fields
• You have a passion for architecting, developing and deploying reliable, scalable, and performant systems
• You have expertise in information retrieval, NLP, and machine learning. You have a deep understanding of concepts like indexing, ranking, query parsing, tokenization, and vector search.
• You have hands-on experience with at least one major search engine (e.g., Elasticsearch, OpenSearch), and familiarity with search evaluation frameworks (e.g., precision, recall, NDCG).
• You have excellent analytical, problem-solving, leadership, and communication skills.
• U.S. Person status is required as this position will require the ability to access U.S. only data systems.

What we offer

Competitive Salary

The salary range for this position is $150,000 - $215,000 + equity. Within the range, individual pay is determined by experience, relevant education, and/or training.

Comprehensive Benefits

We’re proud to offer competitive benefits that support our employees. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:

• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Remote friendly with WeWork access
• Unlimited PTO, shared downtime during the federal holiday calendar, and company-wide off time at the end of each year
• 401(k) match
• Lifestyle & wellbeing stipends
• Salary top-up during military reserve duty
• Fully paid parental leave
• Child and pet care reimbursement during travel

Vannevar is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.

We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply, even if you don't feel like you're a perfect fit. If you're passionate about contributing to our mission, we'd love to hear from you!