Lead Software Engineer, Search (Semantic Platform)

BigCommerce • Austin, TX

4d • Remote

About The Position

Commerce is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to build and scale semantic search as a foundational platform capability. The role leads the design and implementation of hybrid search on OpenSearch, combining traditional keyword matching with semantic retrieval using vector embeddings, neural search, and dense/sparse retrieval. The engineer owns the strategy for search relevance, indexing, and the technical direction of the Search team, while remaining hands-on with high-throughput systems and production operations.

The position also involves evolving data ingestion and indexing pipelines built on MySQL, Kafka or RabbitMQ, and backend microservices so they support vector ingestion and resilient synchronization. The search platform must meet ultra-low-latency and high-availability requirements under heavy concurrent traffic. Commerce is a remote-first company, with optional collaborative workspaces in Austin, Atlanta, and London. The national base salary range is $182,000–$259,000; compensation may also include variable compensation, equity, and benefits where applicable.

Requirements

• At least 7 years of professional software development experience, including a technical leadership or staff-level track record.
• Deep hands-on experience building, scaling, and fine-tuning OpenSearch or Elasticsearch clusters at scale.
• Proven experience implementing semantic search, working with text embeddings and vector databases, and configuring hybrid search scoring models.
• High proficiency in a strongly typed language such as Go, Scala, or Java, along with experience using languages such as PHP.
• Strong experience with relational databases, including MySQL and schema design.
• Experience with distributed messaging tools such as Kafka or RabbitMQ for heavy data mutation and indexing.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with the OpenSearch Neural Search plugin, k-NN search, or Learning to Rank (LTR).
• Experience migrating large-scale search infrastructure from traditional Elasticsearch configurations to advanced OpenSearch semantic implementations.
• Experience setting up automated search quality measurement frameworks, such as NDCG or MRR.
• Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud-environment orchestration.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and implementation of semantic search capabilities and a hybrid BM25-plus-vector search capability using OpenSearch.
• Evaluate, benchmark, and fine-tune search relevance, ranking models, and OpenSearch k-NN/neural search configurations.
• Maintain, scale, and evolve data ingestion and indexing pipelines to support dense vector ingestion and resilient, de-duplicated synchronization.
• Guide the Search team's technical roadmap and establish engineering best practices.
• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers through complex architectural decisions.
• Ensure the search platform meets ultra-low-latency requirements and high-availability SLAs under heavy concurrent traffic.
• Participate in the team's on-call rotation.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed