Senior Search Engineer

About Us

We operate the international online marketplaces of Kaufland. With several thousand sellers and millions of products, we are one of the fastest-growing online marketplaces.

Our corporate culture combines a start-up mindset with the opportunities and stability of a large international corporation. We bring together many years of experience in e-commerce with flat hierarchies and a highly motivated team.

Work Flexibility

We love flexibility. You can decide whether you want to work:

• Remotely within Germany
• From our offices in Cologne, Darmstadt, or Düsseldorf
• From our co-working space in Berlin

You choose the setup that works best for you.

Our Tech & Product Team

Our Tech & Product Team consists of around 400 experts dedicated to creating the best possible shopping experience for our customers.

• Develop innovative technical solutions for our online marketplace
• Improve the customer shopping journey
• Enable an optimal selling experience for our marketplace sellers
• Work in cross-functional teams to continuously improve the platform

Your Role

As a Senior Search Engineer (all genders) – Elasticsearch, your mission is to bring our search capabilities to the next level and deliver the best possible search experience for our customers.

Your Tasks

• Improving search relevance by writing faster queries, improving data quality, and making data-driven decisions on search relevance
• Enhancing our ingestion architecture by consuming change events, updating Elasticsearch mappings, and enabling indexing into documents from multiple sources
• Efficient system integration by optimizing mapping, improving data retrieval performance, and enhancing search boosting strategies
• Data modeling to understand how indexing and querying decisions impact performance and search quality
• Performance optimization by continuously monitoring and improving search speed
• Ensuring system resiliency within a microservices environment by designing robust solutions and applying best practices such as circuit breakers and exponential backoff strategies

Our Technology Stack

• Kubernetes
• gRPC
• TypeScript
• Node.js (latest major version)
• Elasticsearch
• MongoDB
• Kafka
• DataDog for monitoring

Your Profile

• 7+ years of experience as a Search Engineer
• Strong understanding of how distributed search engines work
• Hands-on experience with well-known search technologies such as Elasticsearch
• Ability to run, monitor, debug, and operate Elasticsearch clusters
• Commitment to writing well-tested and well-reviewed code
• Strong data-driven mindset with experience using A/B testing and defining measurable success metrics
• Interest in modern search technologies such as semantic search, NLP, vector search, hybrid search, machine learning, and LLMs
• Strong collaboration skills with a willingness to mentor and share knowledge
• Team-oriented mindset with the ability to provide honest feedback and constructive discussions
• Excellent written and spoken English

What We Offer

Flexible Work

• Choose between remote work within Germany or working from our offices in Cologne, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf, or Berlin
• Relocation support if you plan to move to Germany

Health & Well-Being

• Discounted access to Urban Sports Club and RSG Group fitness studios
• Mental health support through Instahelp online counseling

Time Off

• 30 days of vacation per year
• Opportunity to take a sabbatical after a certain period with the company

Additional Benefits

• Pluxee restaurant vouchers with tax-advantaged meal allowances
• Subsidized Deutschlandticket for public transportation
• Monthly Kaufland.de employee discount coupon
• Free choice of operating system: MacOS or Ubuntu Linux

Learning & Development

• Access to online language learning programs
• Diverse in-house training opportunities
• Automated 360-degree feedback process
• Company-covered costs for conferences, training, and workshops

Our Culture

Our dynamic culture blends:

• Flat hierarchies
• Start-up mentality
• An international team representing 65+ nationalities
• The stability and strength of the Schwarz Group

From day one, you will connect with colleagues through our digital onboarding journey, buddy program, team events, company events, and regular all-hands meetings.