Senior Search Engineer

Senior Search Engineer (all genders) – Elasticsearch

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 culture combines a start-up mentality with the stability and opportunities of a large corporation. We bring together deep e-commerce expertise, flat hierarchies, and a highly motivated international team.

Work Your Way

Enjoy full flexibility: work remotely within Germany or from one of our offices in Cologne, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf, or our co-working space in Berlin. You decide what works best for you.

Your Mission

As a Senior Search Engineer – Elasticsearch, your goal is to take our search experience to the next level and create outstanding customer journeys on our marketplace.

Your Tasks

• Improve relevance – Optimize query performance, enhance data quality, and make informed relevancy decisions based on measurable insights
• Enrich ingestion architecture – Consume change events, update Elasticsearch mappings, and enable multi-source indexing into single documents
• Efficient integration – Improve mapping, accelerate retrieval of updated data, and enhance fields for better search performance
• Data modelling – Understand indexing and querying implications to optimize system design
• Performance enhancement – Continuously monitor and improve search speed
• Resiliency & safety – Design robust systems in a microservice environment using circuit breakers, bulkheads, and exponential backoff strategies

Our Tech Stack

• Kubernetes, gRPC
• TypeScript & latest Node.js
• Elasticsearch & MongoDB
• Kafka
• DataDog for monitoring

Your Profile

• 7+ years of relevant experience as a Search Engineer
• Strong understanding of distributed search engines and hands-on experience with leading search technologies
• Experience running, monitoring, debugging, and operating Elasticsearch clusters
• Commitment to well-tested, reviewed code and measurable outcomes
• Strong experimentation mindset (A/B testing, defining success metrics)
• Interest in modern search developments (semantic search, NLP, LLMs, vector & hybrid search, ML)
• Collaborative mindset with a focus on mentoring and knowledge sharing
• Excellent written and spoken English skills

What We Offer

• Flexible work model – Remote within Germany or from Cologne, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf, or Berlin
• Relocation support – Attractive package for moving to Germany
• 30 days vacation plus sabbatical options
• Urban Sports Club & RSG Group fitness offers
• Mental well-being support via Instahelp
• Deutschlandticket subsidy
• Pluxee restaurant vouchers (tax-advantaged meal allowance)
• Employee discount – Monthly Kaufland.de coupon
• Choice of OS – macOS or Ubuntu Linux
• Learning & development – Language courses, conferences, workshops, 360° feedback
• Strong team culture – Buddy program, onboarding journey, company events, and all-hands meetings

Diversity at Kaufland e-commerce

We welcome applications from everyone, regardless of skin colour, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, ethnic origin, religion, or ideology.

We are proud signatories of the Charta der Vielfalt (German Diversity Charter), because we believe extraordinary achievements are only possible through diversity.