Search Engineer

About the company Our client is a fast-growing software company. The role Raydar is recruiting for this role on behalf of our client. Take charge of the relevance and performance of a large-scale search platform, combining backend engineering with hands-on ranking work. The position carries full responsibility for services across their lifecycle, from initial design through live operation. What you'll do - Lead efforts to improve the quality of results returned by a retrieval system. - Build the data collection, indexing and query-serving components of a search offering. - Bring down response times and the cost of each query as traffic increases. - Take full responsibility for services from first design through launch, monitoring and ongoing refinement. - Collaborate with search leadership and peers to shape the technical plan. Requirements What we're looking for - At least 3 years as the primary owner of the indexing and query-serving layers of a live search engine operating at meaningful scale. - A track record of ranking improvements you drove, with the measured business or quality result to show for it. - Practical experience tuning result relevance with techniques such as keyword scoring, embedding-based retrieval and result re-ordering, on an engine you run. - Backend programming skill in Go, Rust, Python or a comparable language. - A balanced focus on speed, cost and correctness when running search services under heavy query load. - Comfort turning loosely defined problems into working systems, preferring to release, measure and adjust. - Ability to work on-site five days a week in San Francisco or Toronto, either already local or relocating before starting. Bonus points - Background at a company where search is the main product, such as web search, AI-powered search or large marketplace search. - Time spent at a young, rapidly growing company. Benefits Compensation and benefits - Base salary: USD 235,000 to 260,000 per year - Equity - Health, dental and vision coverage - Life and disability insurance - Retirement plan - Paid time off - Paid parental leave Location and work model - San Francisco, CA, United States or Toronto, ON, Canada - On-site, five days a week - Full-time