Senior Software Engineer, Knowledge Engine

pineconeUS Remote - Hybrid$180k – $220k+ Equity6d ago

In Office Senior NA Artificial Intelligence Software Senior Software Engineer Go Rust C++Java Python

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Requirements

To thrive in this role, you don't need to check every single box, but you should be deeply passionate about how to turn data into knowledge.
Systems Expertise
Architectural Depth: You have a proven track record (typically 6+ years) of shipping production-grade backends for large-scale systems. You don’t just write code; you design for high throughput, low latency, and long-term maintainability.
Data Engineering Savvy: You’re comfortable building high-throughput indexing pipelines that handle both the messy world of unstructured data and the rigid world of structured schemas.
Retrieval Intuition: You understand that "search" is more than just a keyword match. You have direct experience (or deep theoretical knowledge) in semantic search, vector databases, hybrid retrieval strategies, or with traditional search engines like Elastic or OpenSearch.
RAG & Orchestration: You understand the nuances of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) patterns, from embedding pipelines and hybrid search techniques to how query planning and metadata filtering can make or break an LLM's performance.
Language Fluency: You are an expert in at least one major language like Go, Rust, C++, Java, or Python.
Infrastructure: Familiarity and experience with modern infrastructure tools, such as Kubernetes, cloud-native architectures, and observability frameworks, as well as infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform or Pulumi.
Ownership & Impact
Product Thinking: You don't just build to spec; you build for the user. You can design clean, intuitive APIs that both human developers and autonomous agents will love.
Ambiguity Navigator: You’re comfortable in a high-growth environment. You prefer "owning a problem" over "executing a ticket."
Experience building multi-tenant SaaS platforms.
Experience with retrieval evaluation frameworks—knowing how to actually measure "good" search results.
Experience with query planning or agentic reasoning loops (e.g., teaching a system how to break down a complex prompt into multiple specific steps).

Responsibilities

Design and build scalable platform components leveraging advanced retrieval via query planning, semantic and hybrid search, metadata-aware search, and LLM generation.
Design and build optimized indexing pipelines for structured and unstructured data.
Build backend services for semantic and hybrid retrieval, knowledge graph construction, and retrieval orchestration.
Improve retrieval quality through evaluation and observability frameworks.
Design APIs for internal and external user and agentic consumers.
Optimize latency, throughput and cost across large-scale inference and retrieval workloads.
Drive technical direction for reliability and security.

Benefits

$180K – $220K • Offers Equity
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Please Note: we have set up limits for applications for this role. It is in the General group. The following limits apply to applications for all jobs within this group:
Candidates may not apply more than 2 times in any 60 day span for any job in the General Group.
Candidates may not re-apply to the same role within 365 days if not presented with an offer
Candidates may not re-apply to any role within the General group within 365 days if not presented with an offer
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