Sr. Software Engineer - Professional Archive Search & AI

Smarsh is a company focused on providing advanced search and data systems for compliance needs. The Senior Software Engineer will design, build, and evolve search capabilities that blend traditional and AI-driven approaches, collaborating with cross-functional teams to tackle complex challenges.

Responsibilities:

• Support and empower your team by contributing to a collaborative, inclusive, and respectful work environment
• Partner with engineers and stakeholders to design and deliver scalable search and data solutions
• Help bridge traditional lexical search and modern semantic search approaches
• Design and implement hybrid search strategies combining keyword-based and vector-based retrieval
• Work with vector databases to manage and query high-dimensional embeddings
• Design and optimize retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, including handling long documents and retrieval quality
• Contribute to knowledge graph–driven approaches to enhance search relevance and data relationships
• Build and maintain high-throughput streaming data pipelines (e.g., Kafka) for real-time ingestion and indexing
• Contribute to architectural decisions that improve system scalability, reliability, and observability
• Participate in a shared on-call rotation to support service reliability and incident response with a focus on learning and prevention
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering to define technical requirements, timelines, and deliverables
• Apply modern engineering practices, including Agile methodologies, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps principles
• Review code, identify areas for improvement, and help reduce technical debt
• Troubleshoot and resolve production issues to maintain high availability and performance
• Stay current with emerging technologies in search, AI, and data systems, and evaluate their impact
• Deploy and manage applications in Kubernetes environments
• Monitor application health and performance using tools such as Splunk, Datadog, and Grafana

Requirements:

• Experience building and operating software in a modern private cloud-based environment
• Strong background in distributed systems and search or data-intensive applications
• Experience with search technologies such as Lucene, Elasticsearch, or Solr, including how indexing and query systems work
• Hands-on experience with vector similarity search and vector databases (e.g., Qdrant, Milvus, Vespa, or similar)
• Familiarity with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) concepts and architectures
• Understanding of knowledge graphs or graph-based data modeling concepts
• Experience designing scalable data pipelines and working with streaming technologies such as Kafka
• A collaborative mindset, with openness to feedback and different perspectives
• Understanding of modern software development practices and Agile methodologies
• Ability to communicate technical concepts, progress, and trade-offs clearly
• Comfort working in evolving environments where requirements may change over time
• A proactive and thoughtful approach to solving complex problems
• Around 6+ years of experience in software engineering, with experience in search or data systems
• Proficiency in Java or a similar backend programming language
• Experience deploying and managing applications in Kubernetes
• Familiarity with relational databases and query optimization (e.g., MS SQL or similar)
• Experience working with Linux-based systems
• Exposure to messaging systems such as Kafka or AMQ
• Experience contributing to or designing AI/ML-powered systems in production environments
• Participation in open-source projects or technical communities