Hungryroot - Senior Backend Software Engineer, Search
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Requirements
• 5+ yrs of commercial software development experience • 3+ yrs of hands-on experience with OpenSearch or Elasticsearch (index design, cluster management, query DSL) • 2+ yrs of experience with semantic/vector search techniques (KNN, approximate nearest neighbor algorithms such as HNSW, embedding models) • 3+ yrs of experience using Python and the wider ecosystem as the primary day-to-day environment • 2+ yrs of experience building and tuning search relevance (BM25, function scoring, hybrid retrieval pipelines) • 2+ yrs of experience troubleshooting production issues in search or data-intensive systems • Active experience using AI-powered developer tools (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) to augment coding, debugging, and problem-solving workflows • Experience with AWS OpenSearch Service (managed clusters, fine-grained access control, index state management) • 2+ yrs of experience working with a web framework such as Django (preferred), Flask, or similar • Familiarity with text embedding models and inference serving (e.g., Hugging Face TEI, sentence-transformers) • Experience with search observability, query analytics, A/B testing search relevance, and monitoring cluster performance • Experience with Django REST Framework and building search APIs • Proficient in leveraging modern AI-powered developer tooling • Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC tools such as Terraform) • Proficiency working with Git • A bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field
Responsibilities
• Own the search service end-to-end: index design, query pipelines, relevance tuning, cluster health, scaling, and upgrades of our OpenSearch infrastructure. • Drive important technical discussions around search architecture, hybrid retrieval strategies, embedding model selection, scoring/normalization pipelines, and personalization and help the team arrive at the best possible solution given any constraints we may face. • Work closely with engineering leads and product stakeholders to translate business requirements (e.g., new facets, dietary filtering, personalized ranking) into performant search features. • Contribute directly to feature development across the search stack: document mapping, query builders, function scoring, KNN vector search, and the text embeddings inference sidecar. • Incorporate AI-powered development tools (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) into daily workflows to accelerate prototyping, code review, debugging, and documentation, and help establish best practices for the team's adoption of these tools. • Help raise the bar on code quality and enforce engineering discipline through code review feedback, testing, technical presentations, and opportunistic refactoring. • Participate in the interview process for other senior, mid, or junior engineering candidates and contribute to hiring decisions.
Benefits
• Remote-first: work from home, work from our NYC office, work from anywhere in the U.S. - you decide! • Unlimited vacation policy • Universal paid parental leave • Monthly Hungryroot credit for delicious, healthy groceries • Comprehensive health, vision, dental, and life insurance • 401k with Company Match • A work from home stipend to support your initial home-office setup
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