Staff AI Engineer

Workato; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work environment

Dynamic employee benefits

Innovative culture with a focus on growth

Job summary

A leading technology firm in Palo Alto is seeking an exceptional Search/AI Engineer to design and optimize intelligent search systems using machine learning. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in query understanding and relevance tuning, skilled in Python and search engines like Opensearch or Elasticsearch. The role offers an innovative work culture that emphasizes growth and collaboration, focusing on tackling complex search challenges. Join us to make a significant impact in enterprise orchestration.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience with 3+ years in search or information retrieval.
• Strong understanding of traditional and neural search techniques.
• Familiarity with relevance evaluation metrics.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development of query understanding systems.
• Design learning-to-rank models that optimize relevance.
• Architect next-gen search infrastructure for real-time indexing.

Skills

Python

Information Retrieval

Query Understanding

Text Processing and NLP

Analytical Skills

Education

Bachelor’s/Master’s/PhD in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or a quantitative field

Tools

Opensearch

Elasticsearch

Large-scale distributed systems

Job description

Overview

Workato transforms technology complexity into business opportunity. As the leader in enterprise orchestration, Workato helps businesses globally streamline operations by connecting data, processes, applications, and experiences. Its AI‑powered platform enables teams to navigate complex workflows in real‑time, driving efficiency and agility.

Trusted by a community of 400,000 global customers, Workato empowers organizations of every size to unlock new value and lead in today’s fast‑changing world.

Ultimately, Workato believes in fostering a flexible, trust‑oriented culture that empowers everyone to take full ownership of their roles. We are driven by innovation and looking for team players who want to actively build our company.

We also believe in balancing productivity with self‑care. That’s why we offer all of our employees a vibrant and dynamic work environment along with a multitude of benefits they can enjoy inside and outside of their work lives.

Responsibilities

As we work towards building out the Context Layer for the Agentic Enterprise, we are looking for an exceptional Search/AI Engineer with experience in Search Relevance to join our growing team. In this role, you will lead the design, development, and optimization of intelligent search systems that leverage machine learning at their core.

• Lead the development of advanced query understanding systems that parse natural language, resolve ambiguity, and infer user intent.
• Design and deploy learning‑to‑rank models that optimize relevance using behavioral signals, embeddings, and structured feedback.
• Build and scale robust Entity Recognition pipelines that enhance document understanding, enable contextual disambiguation, and support entity‑aware retrieval.
• Architect next‑gen search infrastructure capable of supporting highly dynamic document corpora and real‑time indexing.
• Create and maintain graph‑based knowledge systems that enhance LLM capabilities through structured relationship data.
• Drive improvements in query rewriting, intent classification, and semantic search, using both statistical and neural methods.
• Own the design of evaluation frameworks for offline/online relevance testing, A/B experimentation, and continual model tuning.
• Collaborate with product and applied research teams to translate user needs into data‑informed search innovations.
• Produce clean, scalable code and influence system architecture and roadmap across the relevance and platform stack.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s/Master’s/PhD degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or another quantitative field.
• 7+ years of backend engineering experience with 3+ years in search, information retrieval, or related fields.
• Strong proficiency in Python.
• Hands‑on experience with search engines (Opensearch or Elasticsearch).
• Strong understanding of information retrieval concepts spanning traditional methods (TF‑IDF, BM25) and modern neural search techniques (vector embeddings, transformer models).
• Experience with text processing, NLP, and relevance tuning.
• Experience with relevance evaluation metrics (NDCG, MRR, MAP).
• Experience with large‑scale distributed systems.
• Proficiency in Knowledge Graph construction and optimization is a plus.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills.

Soft Skills

• Strong communication abilities to explain technical concepts.
• Collaborative mindset for cross‑functional teamwork.
• Detail‑oriented with strong focus on quality.
• Self‑motivated and able to work independently.
• Passion for solving complex search problems.

(REQ ID: 2472)

Equal Employment Opportunity

As set forth in Workato’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.