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Staff Backend Engineer, Search

250k – 300kUnited StatesRemote7+ YOE
Summary

Staff-level search engineer responsible for designing, scaling, and optimizing ClickUp's search infrastructure using OpenSearch/ElasticSearch, including real-time indexing, vector search, and relevance tuning.

About the role

Core Responsibilities

  • Design and implement robust search solutions that scale with our rapidly growing user base
  • Improve search relevance, accuracy, and speed to deliver the most relevant results to users at blazing fast speeds
  • Improve real-time indexing pipelines to ensure search results remain up-to-date
  • Create measurement frameworks to evaluate and improve search quality
  • Build and enhance vector search capabilities to power next-generation search experiences
  • Collaborate with AI, backend, and product teams to integrate search into new features
  • Troubleshoot complex search-related issues at scale
  • Mentor junior engineers and contribute to engineering best practices

Technical Requirements

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field
  • 7+ years of experience as a search engineer or in a directly related role
  • Strong expertise in search technologies, particularly OpenSearch / ElasticSearch
  • Experience measuring and optimizing search quality
  • Experience with high-volume, distributed data processing systems
  • Proven ability to optimize query parsing, indexing, and relevance tuning for search systems
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
  • Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively across teams

Preferred Qualifications

  • Hands-on experience with vector embeddings and semantic search implementations
  • Experience with TypeScript in backend systems
  • Track record of architecting search solutions that maintain performance under heavy load
  • Experience applying machine learning and NLP to enhance search relevance
  • Knowledge of information retrieval concepts and search evaluation metrics
Skills
OpenSearchElasticSearchVector SearchSemantic SearchTypeScriptMachine LearningNLPQuery ParsingIndexingRelevance Tuning
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