Search Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Oversee, support, and enhance enterprise search applications and indexing workflows utilizing Solr, Spark, Flume, AWS OpenSearch, and Linux-based systems.

• Execute operations and maintenance tasks such as patch management, vulnerability control, system administration, monitoring, configuration oversight, and routine platform assistance.

• Diagnose and resolve indexing errors, data discrepancies, query syntax issues, relevance challenges, and search performance decline.

• Supervise indexing processes and platform health to ensure adherence to indexing SLAs and search/retrieval SLAs.

• Optimize search configurations, analyzers, synonyms, ranking criteria, and index structures to enhance search relevance, indexing efficiency, and retrieval performance.

• Conduct scheduled maintenance tasks, including weekly, monthly, and biannual data purges, index cleanup, retention-related activities, and storage optimization.

• Assist with quarterly bulk indexing operations, which encompass large-scale reloads, synonym updates, name normalization, and post-load validation.

• Collaborate with data stored in Microsoft SQL Server to investigate ingestion challenges, confirm upstream data quality, analyze indexing results, and review operational or search-related metrics obtained post-indexing.

• Utilize SQL to query source and operational data, examine inconsistencies, aid troubleshooting efforts, and validate indexing results and SLA-related metrics.

• Employ Azure Log Analytics and similar monitoring tools to scrutinize logs, investigate failures, identify operational trends, and facilitate root cause analysis for indexing, search, and data-processing issues.

• Stay informed about Java-based source-to-target data comparison and validation tools, regularly review their outputs, and address data quality, synchronization, and accuracy issues between source systems and indexed search platforms.

• Investigate and rectify data ingestion, transformation, indexing, and retrieval problems across both upstream and downstream systems.

• Develop and enhance automation, scripts, and support tools that boost reliability, reduce operational burdens, and improve observability.

• Assist in modernizing legacy search capabilities towards AWS OpenSearch, semantic search, vector search, hybrid retrieval, and RAG-enabled solutions.

• Document procedures, runbooks, support processes, recurring maintenance tasks, and operational insights, collaborating with cross-functional teams to enhance search quality and system reliability.

⛳️ Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

• Over 5 years of experience in software engineering, enterprise search, search platform support, information retrieval, or large-scale data systems.

• Practical experience in supporting and enhancing enterprise search platforms like Apache Solr, OpenSearch, Elasticsearch, Lucene, or similar technologies.

• Familiarity with Linux production environments, including troubleshooting, configuration modifications, and routine system support.

• Strong background in indexing, schema design, mappings, analyzers, query processing, search relevance adjustment, and performance enhancement.

• Experience in supporting batch or large-scale data ingestion and processing workflows utilizing Spark and related technologies.

• Proficient programming skills in Java and/or Python.

• Working knowledge of Microsoft SQL Server, including querying source data, validating data flows, investigating inconsistencies, and analyzing indexing or operational metrics.

• Experience with log monitoring and observability tools to investigate failures and assist with operational troubleshooting; familiarity with Azure Log Analytics is strongly preferred.

• Experience in troubleshooting distributed systems, indexing workflows, data synchronization challenges, and production search clusters.

• Experience in managing SLA-driven operational environments with responsibility for service restoration, recurring maintenance, and issue resolution.

• Ability to comprehend and work with validation, comparison, and support tools used to confirm data accuracy between source and target systems.

• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving abilities.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the capability to collaborate across engineering, operations, and stakeholder teams.

• Ability to work in the US eastern time zone and available to travel to the Washington, DC area once a year.

• Eligibility for Public Trust Clearance.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive compensation

• Health and Wellness programs

• Income Protection

• Paid Leave

• Retirement