Staff Search Engineer (AI)

TL;DR

Staff Search Engineer (AI): Architecting and optimizing large-scale retrieval infrastructure for a cloud-native legal data platform with an accent on hybrid search systems combining traditional IR with vector search and LLM-augmented retrieval. Focus on designing scalable, fault-tolerant indexing pipelines, driving technical excellence in search quality, and mentoring engineering teams.

Location: Must be based in the United States

Salary: $174,000–$262,000

Company

hirify.global is a cloud-native software company providing an intelligent platform for legal data management and e-discovery used by Fortune 500 enterprises and law firms.

What you will do

• Architect and optimize retrieval infrastructure, including indexing pipelines and query execution frameworks.
• Lead the evolution from traditional inverted-index search to hybrid systems integrating semantic and vector search.
• Collaborate with AI/ML teams to integrate LLM-augmented retrieval, re-ranking, and feedback loops.
• Establish benchmarking frameworks for precision, recall, and latency to drive continuous quality improvement.
• Partner with platform teams to ensure retrieval systems are performant and cost-efficient on Kubernetes.
• Mentor engineers and champion technical excellence in search and retrieval across the organization.

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with a focus on information retrieval at scale.
• Deep expertise in search engines such as Elasticsearch, Solr, Lucene, or OpenSearch.
• Strong knowledge of retrieval models including BM25, vector similarity, and learning-to-rank.
• Proven experience with distributed systems, index sharding, and consistency trade-offs.
• Proficiency in Java, C#, Python, or Go with a focus on system-level performance optimization.
• Experience operating retrieval systems in cloud-native environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP) using Kubernetes.

Nice to have

• Experience integrating vector databases like Pinecone, Weaviate, or Milvus.
• Familiarity with knowledge graph technologies (Neo4j, RDF/SPARQL).
• Experience with large-scale machine learning for ranking and embeddings.
• Background in legal tech or e-discovery search challenges.

Culture & Benefits

• Competitive base salary, annual performance bonus, and long-term equity incentives.
• Comprehensive health, retirement, and wellness programs.
• Flexible time off (DTO) and parental leave for primary and secondary caregivers.
• Home office stipend and two annual company-wide breaks.
• High-trust, action-oriented environment with a focus on autonomy and technical exploration.