Job Description
Our client is looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to lead their Search Engine Team within our Product Engineering organization. The ideal candidate brings a mix of deep technical expertise and strategic leadership, particularly in the areas of Solr-based search, semantic and hybrid search systems, and collaboration with ML teams. This role is pivotal in modernizing legacy systems while driving forward-thinking, next-generation search capabilities.
Key Responsibilities:
Team Leadership & People Management:
- Manage a 10-12-person remote team including two tech leads. Responsible for coaching, hiring, and performance management, while shaping an inclusive and growth-oriented engineering culture.
Search Strategy & Technical Execution:
- Lead the transition from legacy Solr infrastructure to modern, semantic, and hybrid search solutions leveraging AWS. Drive roadmap planning in collaboration with product and ML leadership.
System Modernization:
- Oversee and evolve the current search indexing pipeline and AWS infrastructure. Partner with internal experts to explore LLMs, vector databases, and semantic models for enhanced customer discovery.
Cross-Functional Collaboration:
- Work closely with product managers, architects, and machine learning teams to align on feature development, scalability, and performance.
Operational Excellence:
- Ensure system uptime, stability, and quality across all stages of development and production. Proactively manage risk and incident response processes.
Key Skills:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
- 4+ years of engineering management experience (minimum of 2 required)
- Prior hands-on software development experience (Java/AWS preferred)
- Experience modernizing large-scale search systems
- Deep expertise in Solr search engine technologies
- Familiarity with semantic search, vector databases, and hybrid search models
- Proven ability to work with ML teams and integrate search with AI/ML capabilities
- Strong leadership, communication, and technical strategy development skills
- Comfortable with remote-first environment
- Willingness to travel to Chicago once per quarter
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with LLM integration in eCommerce or search platforms
- Background in AWS-based infrastructure and indexing pipelines
- Familiarity with tools and platforms like Elasticsearch, Vespa, or Pinecone
- Exposure to managing a blend of FTEs and contractors with a plan to convert to all FTEs
Salary: $180,000- $190,000 per year ( depends on experience level)
Benefits: Medical Insurance, PTO, 401 (k) and more
