Senior Software Engineer – Backend & Search

Job description

**Role Overview** We are looking for experienced **Senior Software Engineers** who can independently own the design, development, and delivery of scalable software solutions with minimal guidance. We're hiring for **two complementary tracks** to strengthen different parts of our engineering platform. While both roles require strong software engineering fundamentals and technical leadership, each focuses on a distinct area: - **Track A – Backend & Search Engineering:** Build and optimize high-throughput backend services using **Go** and **Python** , improve search relevance, and work with large-scale data systems powered by **ClickHouse** . - **Track B – Data Engineering:** Design and maintain robust data pipelines using **Airflow** and **dbt/Dataform** , working with **BigQuery** and **ClickHouse** to enable reliable, scalable data processing. In either track, you'll drive technical design decisions, establish engineering best practices, mentor fellow engineers, and help scale our platform while maintaining a high bar for quality, performance, and reliability. **About the Commerce Team** The **Commerce (Recommendations & Merchandising)** team builds and scales our enterprise-grade e-commerce personalization platform, powering intelligent product recommendations, merchandising, search, and the data infrastructure behind them. Our platform processes large-scale data and serves high-throughput workloads using modern technologies, including **Python** , **Go** , **React** , **TypeScript** , and a **Google Cloud** -based data platform built on **Airflow** , **dbt/Dataform** , **BigQuery** , and **ClickHouse** . As part of this team, you'll help design, build, and evolve highly scalable systems that directly impact customer experiences across our platform. **What You'll Do** We're hiring for two complementary Senior Software Engineer tracks. Both roles involve technical ownership, mentoring, and building production-grade systems at scale. **Across Both Tracks** - Own the design, implementation, and delivery of complex features and distributed systems. - Drive architectural decisions and establish engineering best practices. - Lead code reviews and maintain high standards for code quality, reliability, and maintainability. - Mentor software engineers and interns through technical guidance and feedback. - Improve system performance, scalability, observability, and security. - Partner closely with the Tech Lead and Engineering Manager on roadmap planning and technical execution. **Track A — Senior Backend / Search Engineer** **Focus Areas:** - Build high-throughput, low-latency backend services using **Go** and **Python** . - Design and improve search relevance, ranking, and recommendation services. - Optimize **ClickHouse** queries and improve backend performance. - Build reliable, observable, and fault-tolerant distributed APIs. **Track B — Senior Data Engineer** **Focus Areas:** - Design, build, and maintain scalable ETL/ELT pipelines. - Develop reusable workflows using **Airflow** and transformation frameworks such as **dbt** or **Dataform** . - Own data quality, lineage, governance, and multi-tenant data architecture. - Optimize warehouse performance, pipeline reliability, and cloud infrastructure costs. **What We're Looking For** **Required Qualifications** - 3–6 years of experience building and operating production software at scale. - Strong understanding of software design, distributed systems, and engineering best practices. - Experience with automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, observability, and code reviews. - Passion for mentoring engineers and driving technical excellence. **Track A – Backend/Search** **Experience with most of the following:** - Go and/or Python - Search platforms such as Meilisearch, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Solr, or Vespa - Analytical databases such as ClickHouse, BigQuery, or Apache Druid - SQL and API design - High-performance distributed systems **Track B – Data Engineering** **Experience with most of the following:** - Advanced SQL and data modeling - Workflow orchestration tools such as Airflow, Prefect, or Dagster - Data transformation frameworks including dbt, Dataform, or Apache Spark - Cloud data warehouses such as BigQuery, Snowflake, ClickHouse, or Redshift - Python - Cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure) **Good to have** - Kafka / Pub/Sub, Bigtable / Cassandra, Redis, Kubernetes / Docker / Helm, GraphQL. - Semantic / vector search, ranking, recommendations, or ML pipelines. - E-commerce / personalization domain experience. **Qualifications** - Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field. **Equivalent experience counts** We don't hire based solely on experience with a specific technology. If you've worked with comparable tools and can demonstrate strong engineering fundamentals, we'd love to hear from you. - **Languages:** Python / Go ↔ Java, Node.js / TypeScript, Scala, C++, Rust (strong fundamentals transfer) - **Search engines:** Meilisearch ↔ Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Solr / Lucene, Vespa, Typesense, Azure Cognitive Search - **Analytical / columnar stores:** ClickHouse / BigQuery ↔ Snowflake, Redshift, Apache Druid, Apache Pinot - **Orchestration:** Airflow ↔ Prefect, Dagster, Luigi, Temporal, AWS Step Functions - **Transformation:** dbt / Dataform ↔ Apache Spark, SQLMesh - **Messaging / streaming:** Pub/Sub ↔ Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS SQS / Kinesis, Pulsar - **Wide-column / KV stores:** Bigtable ↔ Cassandra, DynamoDB, HBase, ScyllaDB; Redis ↔ Memcached, Aerospike - **Cloud:** GCP ↔ AWS, Azure **Our Commerce tech stack** - **Backend:** Python (FastAPI, Strawberry GraphQL, SQLAlchemy), Go - **Frontend:** React, TypeScript, Vite, GraphQL - **Data & storage:** PostgreSQL, Redis, ClickHouse, BigQuery, Bigtable, Google Cloud Storage - **Search:** Meilisearch - **Data engineer