Staff Software Engineer - Search Platform

Uber; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 232,000 - 258,000; Full time

Job summary

Uber is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for its Search Platform team in Sunnyvale, CA. You will build scalable, low-latency distributed search systems and advance lexical, semantic, and vector search capabilities to support AI-native workloads.

You will drive performance, work across teams, and help shape platform architecture to meet Uber's evolving data needs. A strong background in distributed systems and backend languages is essential.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with large-scale distributed systems.
• Strong expertise in distributed systems architecture, concurrency, data structures, algorithms, and performance optimization.
• Proficiency in one or more backend languages such as Java, Go, Rust or C++.
• Proven track record of architecting and delivering complex, production-grade infrastructure systems with high availability and scalability.
• Ability to lead technically ambiguous, cross-team initiatives from architecture through execution and production adoption.
• Strong technical judgment, communication, and collaboration skills with influence across teams.

Responsibilities

• Build next-generation search infrastructure: design and develop scalable, low-latency distributed search systems.
• Advance search capabilities: develop lexical, semantic, vector, and hybrid search for complex workloads.
• Enable AI-native and agentic applications: support intelligent retrieval, contextual search, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
• Drive performance and efficiency: optimize indexing throughput, query latency, resource usage, and costs.
• Tackle problems in distributed indexing, storage architecture, query execution, data freshness, and reliability.
• Shape platform architecture and strategy with technical direction for AI-enabled needs.
• Collaborate across teams to deliver reusable, high-impact platform capabilities.

Skills

Distributed systems

Concurrency

Data structures

Algorithms

Performance optimization

Java

Go

Rust

C++

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Tools

Elasticsearch/OpenSearch

Solr/Lucene

Vector search (HNSW/IVF)

Job description

About the role and team

Uber's Search Platform team builds and operates the foundational search infrastructure powering critical business applications and services. Our platform supports a diverse and rapidly evolving set of workloads, spanning lexical search, semantic and vector search, observability and emerging agentic AI applications.

We are looking for a passionate Staff Software Engineer to help us build the next generation of Search Platform-a highly scalable, reliable, cost-efficient, and intelligent retrieval infrastructure designed to meet the demands of both traditional search and AI-native workloads.

You will have the opportunity to solve challenging distributed systems problems at Uber scale, push the boundaries of modern search technologies, and shape the future of how data is indexed, retrieved, and consumed across Uber's ecosystem.

What you'll do

• Build next-generation search infrastructure: Design and develop highly scalable, low-latency, and reliable distributed search systems that power Uber's critical business applications.




• Advance search and retrieval capabilities: Develop and optimize lexical, semantic, vector, and hybrid search capabilities to support increasingly complex retrieval workloads.




• Enable AI-native and agentic applications : Evolve the search platform to support emerging AI and agentic workloads, including intelligent retrieval, contextual search, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).




• Drive performance and efficiency: Optimize indexing throughput, query latency, resource utilization, and infrastructure costs across large-scale distributed systems.




• Solve complex engineering challenges: Tackle problems involving distributed indexing, storage architecture, query execution, data freshness, scalability, and system reliability.




• Shape platform architecture and strategy: Contribute to technical direction and architectural decisions that enable the platform to evolve with Uber's growing business and AI needs.




• Collaborate across teams/organizations: Partner with engineering and product teams to understand diverse search requirements and deliver reusable, high-impact platform capabilities.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.




• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant experience designing and building large-scale distributed systems.




• Strong expertise in distributed systems architecture, concurrency, data structures, algorithms, and performance optimization.




• Proficiency in one or more systems or backend programming languages, such as Java, Go, Rust or C++.




• Proven track record of architecting and delivering complex, production-grade infrastructure systems with high availability and scalability requirements.




• Demonstrated ability to lead technically ambiguous, cross-team initiatives from architecture and design through execution and production adoption.




• Strong technical judgment, communication, and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence engineering direction across teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with search technologies such as Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, Solr, Lucene, or large-scale proprietary search systems.




• Deep expertise in search engines and information retrieval systems, including Apache Lucene, OpenSearch, Elasticsearch, or similar technologies.




• Strong understanding of indexing architectures, inverted indexes, query execution, relevance ranking, and distributed search systems.




• Experience with vector search algorithms, such as HNSW, IVF, or other large-scale similarity search techniques.




• Familiarity with semantic search, hybrid retrieval, embedding-based retrieval, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and agentic AI architectures.




• Experience designing storage and compute architectures for large-scale, data-intensive systems, including compute-storage disaggregation, tiered storage, or distributed indexing.




• Proven ability to drive substantial improvements in infrastructure efficiency, query latency, indexing throughput, or system reliability.




• Experience evaluating emerging technologies and translating research or industry advancements into practical, production-grade infrastructure.




• Track record of technical leadership, mentoring senior engineers, and influencing architectural direction across multiple engineering teams.

For San Francisco, CA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD $232,000 per year - USD $258,000 per year.

For Sunnyvale, CA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD $232,000 per year - USD $258,000 per year.

For all US locations, you will be eligible to participate in Uber's bonus program, and may be offered an equity award & other types of comp. All full-time employees are eligible to participate in a 401(k) plan. You will also be eligible for various benefits.

Ready to Ride?

This isn't the kind of place where you follow a playbook - it's where you help write one. If you're driven by impact, energized by challenge, and ready to shape how the world moves - we'd love to hear from you.

You may be eligible for bonuses, equity, and other compensation, as well as a range of benefits. Explore our benefits. (https://jobs.uber.com/en/benefits/)

Offices remain key to collaboration and Uber's culture. Unless approved for full remote work, employees must spend at least 50% of their time in-office. Some roles, like those at greenlight hubs, require full-time in-office presence. Ask your Recruiter for details about this role's requirements.

Uber is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know by completing this form. (https://forms.gle/aDWTk9k6xtMU25Y5A?uclick_id=d56eb634-bfb9-455e-a50d-901b3de0490c)

Uber is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know by completing this form- https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdb_Y9Bv8-lWDMbpidF2GKXsxzNh11wUUVS7fM1znOfEJsVeA/viewform