Relevance Engineer – Enterprise Search & AI Hybrid

Cisco

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Join Cisco’s Enterprise Search team, responsible for powering intelligent knowledge discovery across the company. Our mission is to deliver highly relevant, scalable, and AI-enhanced search experiences that help employees and customers quickly find the information they need. We combine deep expertise in search infrastructure, ranking science, and distributed systems with modern Generative AI capabilities to transform traditional information retrieval into intelligent, context-aware discovery. We are a collaborative team of search engineers, data scientists, and AI practitioners who value experimentation, measurable impact, and technical excellence. What makes this team exciting is the opportunity to shape the future of enterprise search by integrating traditional information retrieval with cutting-edge AI and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and agentic frameworks at scale.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Retrieval, Data Science, or related field with 5+ years of experience in search engineering or relevance optimization.
3+ years of hands-on experience designing and operating Elasticsearch in production environments.
Demonstrated experience tuning search relevance (ranking, scoring models, analyzers, tokenization, synonyms, boosting).
Experience working with large-scale structured and unstructured data sets.
Proficiency in Python, Java, or similar programming language for search and data processing applications.

Nice To Haves

Experience integrating Generative AI or LLM-based systems with search platforms.
Familiarity with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) frameworks and vector search techniques.
Experience with hybrid search (keyword + vector search) and embedding-based retrieval systems.
Knowledge of evaluation metrics such as NDCG, MRR, precision/recall, and A/B testing for search optimization.
Strong communication skills with the ability to translate search relevance improvements into business impact.

Responsibilities

Architect and optimize hybrid retrieval systems leveraging Elasticsearch, semantic embeddings, and re-ranking models to improve top-k relevance, latency, and downstream Generative AI response quality.
Develop and tune relevance models using query analytics, behavioral signals, and experimentation frameworks to improve search outcomes.
Integrate Generative AI capabilities with traditional information retrieval systems to create intelligent, context-aware search experiences.
Implement and optimize Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines that combine structured and unstructured enterprise data sources.
Partner with AI engineers, platform teams, and product stakeholders to define measurable improvements in search quality and user satisfaction.

Benefits

U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance.
Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.
U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies: 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees
1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco
Non-exempt employees receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees
Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)
80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next
Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members
Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer
For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.