Senior Software Engineer, Search & AI

We're looking for a collaborative, self-motivated Senior Software Engineer, Search & AI to join our growing team.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll help build and evolve the customer-facing search experiences that help users discover relevant, high-quality content, along with the backend systems that power them. You'll work across the stack, with a slight emphasis on frontend development, and collaborate closely with engineers, Product, and Design to deliver intuitive search experiences backed by reliable, scalable search and data systems.
What You'll Do

• Own and deliver customer-facing search features and workflows across frontend and backend systems, from technical planning through production
• Build AI-powered product experiences end to end, from the services behind them to the interfaces that make their output useful and trustworthy
• Build intuitive, responsive user experiences using Vue while contributing to the Python and Django services that power them
• Design and improve search, indexing, and retrieval systems that support high-quality content discovery across large volumes of data
• Build and maintain features and data workflows that leverage technologies such as Elasticsearch, Kafka, Celery, and MySQL
• Make thoughtful technical decisions and trade-offs that balance customer experience, delivery speed, performance, reliability, and long-term maintainability
• Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and engineering teammates to shape solutions, clarify requirements, and deliver high-quality customer experiences
• Troubleshoot complex production issues and drive improvements to the performance, reliability, observability, and maintainability of the systems you work on
• Participate in an on-call and incident response rotation, helping diagnose and resolve production issues and improve system reliability over time

To Be Set Up for Success in This Role, You'll Need to Have

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience building and maintaining production software
• Strong experience working across frontend and backend systems and independently delivering features throughout the application stack
• Proficiency with Python or a similar programming language and experience with Django or a comparable web framework
• Experience building polished, maintainable user-facing applications with Vue.js or another modern JavaScript framework
• Experience with Elasticsearch or a comparable search technology, or significant experience working with data-intensive systems
• Experience making technical trade-offs within complex production systems while balancing immediate delivery needs with long-term quality
• Experience diagnosing production issues and contributing to the reliability and operational health of the systems you build
• Experience with TypeScript in a large codebase
• Experience with design systems or shared component libraries
• Flexibility to adjust working hours for overlap with teammates in US time zones

If Any of the Below Also Describe You, This Could Be an Exciting Opportunity

• Experience with Kafka or other streaming or event-driven technologies
• Experience with MySQL, Postgres, or other relational databases
• Experience with Celery or other asynchronous task-processing systems
• Experience building search, discovery, indexing, or information-retrieval features
• Experience improving frontend architecture, performance, or complex customer-facing workflows
• Experience working with high-traffic SaaS applications or systems that process large volumes of data
• Experience building customer-facing features backed by LLMs or other AI models
• Experience judging whether an AI-backed feature is actually working, through evaluation, testing, or user feedback
• Interest in journalism, news, media, or social media

In Addition, We're Always Looking for Candidates Who

• Communicate complex technical ideas clearly and collaborate effectively with both technical and non-technical partners
• Take ownership of problems and drive work forward independently while knowing when to involve others
• Take pride in building readable, testable, maintainable software while making pragmatic technical trade-offs
• Approach ambiguous or complex problems thoughtfully and use sound judgment to identify effective solutions
• Contribute to a strong engineering culture through thoughtful code reviews, knowledge sharing, feedback, and continuous improvement
• Proactively incorporates AI tools into day-to-day work to improve productivity and accelerate delivery

Interview Overview

Below you'll find an outline of the interview plan for this role. Please note that this is what we expect the process to look like; we may ask you for supplemental information or require an additional step before making a final decision.

• 30 min interview with a member of our Talent Team
• A 1 hour zoom interview with the hiring manager
• Peer interviews with several team members
• 30-minute Bar Raiser

Travel & Team Engagement Expectations

This role requires up to 10% travel for team collaboration, customer engagements, and company events. As part of our commitment to building strong connections across our fully distributed team, attendance at our annual company offsite (typically held in Mexico) is expected.
Salary

• The anticipated salary range for this role in Ireland is €95,000-€110,000 annually, depending on experience.
• The anticipated salary for this role in Bulgaria is €6,000+ gross per month, depending on experience.

Individual compensation decisions are based on a number of factors, including experience level, skillset, and balancing internal equity relative to peers at the company. We expect the majority of the candidates who are offered roles at our company to fall healthily throughout the range based on these factors. We recognize that the person we hire may be less experienced (or more senior) than this job description as posted. If that ends up being the case, the updated salary range will be communicated with you as a candidate.

Note: Benefits and compensation reflect offerings for U.S.-based employees. Support is provided for employees in other locations, in compliance with local laws and regulations.

While we are a fully distributed team, we do have limitations on where we can hire and maintain a list of acceptable working locations based on job function. If we are unable to hire in your current location for the role for which you applied, you will be notified via email. While we enjoy many benefits as a permanently distributed and remote company, we cannot always support relocation or extended travel and have guidelines in place to ensure compliant work away from your designated permanent residence.

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