Staff Search Engineer | Elasticsearch

About the Role

As a Staff Search Engineer, you will be tasked with elevating the search experience for Kaufland's customers. This includes enhancing search relevance through faster query writing, improving the quality of incoming data, and making informed decisions about search relevancy. You will enrich the ingestion process by working with change events, updating Elasticsearch mappings, and ensuring efficient indexing from multiple sources into single documents.

Collaboration plays a vital role as you integrate search components within a larger technology stack, improving mappings and speeding up retrieval processes. You will deeply understand data modeling and its impact on both indexing and querying, always striving to optimize search performance. Reliability and resilience are top priorities; you will design systems with microservice safety patterns like circuit breakers and bulkheads in mind, balancing cache use appropriately and favoring exponential backoff strategies.

The technology stack you'll engage with includes Kubernetes, gRPC, TypeScript, Node.js (latest major version), Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Kafka, and DataDog for monitoring.

Responsibilities

• Advance search functionality by tuning relevance, query speed, and data quality.
• Enhance ingestion pipelines, including change event consumption and Elasticsearch schema updates.
• Ensure efficient integration within a complex system architecture for optimized search operations.
• Model data effectively, considering implications for indexing and query efficiency.
• Continuously monitor and boost search performance to achieve rapid results.
• Incorporate resiliency practices in a microservice environment to maintain system stability.

Requirements

• A minimum of seven years' experience as a Search Engineer with a comprehensive understanding of distributed search engines.
• Proven ability to operate, monitor, and troubleshoot Elasticsearch clusters, including writing thoroughly tested and peer-reviewed code.
• Strong data-driven decision-making skills, supported by A/B testing and relevant success metrics.
• Keen interest in cutting-edge search technologies such as semantic search, NLP, LLMs, vector and hybrid search, and machine learning, combined with a focus on performance.
• A collaborative mindset eager to mentor peers, share knowledge, and avoid single points of failure within the team.
• Excellent English communication skills, both written and spoken.
• Commitment to team success, open to constructive feedback, and willing to contribute proactively.

Perks and Benefits

• Flexible work arrangements with options to work remotely from within Germany or from offices located in Cologne, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf, or Berlin.
• Access to fitness and wellness programs through Urban Sports Club and RSG Group Fitness Studios.
• Psychological support services via digital platforms to promote mental well-being.
• Entitlement to 30 days of annual vacation and opportunities to take sabbaticals after a defined period of employment.
• Possibility to acquire tax-advantaged meal vouchers through Pluxee restaurant support.
• Subsidized public transit via the Deutschlandticket for enhanced mobility.
• Monthly employee discounts at Kaufland.de.
• Freedom to choose preferred work hardware between Mac or Lenovo devices.
• Personal and professional growth supported through online language courses, in-house development training, and automated 360-degree feedback.
• A dynamic and diverse workplace culture featuring flat hierarchies, a start-up spirit, and a multi-national workforce, backed by the security of the Schwarz Group.
• Comprehensive onboarding experience including digital orientation, buddy programs, team-building and company-wide events, all hands meetings, and regular performance initiatives.

Additional Information

Kaufland is a technological leader within the Schwarz Group, building innovative online marketplaces focused on delivering superb customer and seller experiences. Our Tech & Product team, numbering around 400 professionals, continuously strives to elevate the shopping journey via technology and teamwork.