Staff Software Engineer, Search Platform (Remote)

ezCater is the #1 food tech platform for workplaces in the US. They are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the Search Platform, taking ownership of the Search Engine and Indexing Pipeline while driving strategies for search relevance and ranking.

Responsibilities:

• Own the Search Engine architecture: technology direction (Vespa-based), document schema, query serving, and operational model
• Own and build the Indexing Pipeline: Temporal-orchestrated workflows that ingest, validate, transform, and write data into the search engine and availability store
• Own Availability: zone-based delivery filtering, schedule matching, and the data model that powers it- extracted from the legacy monolith and re-implemented
• Own the Two-Stage Filtering Architecture: zone-based availability filtering followed by Vespa filtering and ranking
• Drive search relevance and ranking strategy across ordering contexts and customer types, in collaboration with product and data
• Define clear, well-versioned APIs and contracts for how search and availability are consumed across all channels
• Manage migration sequencing and risk across the phased rollout (Typeahead, Availability, Core Search)
• Build a measurement and experimentation foundation supporting full-funnel evaluation, from CTR through order fulfillment
• Lead through collaborative design: white-boarding, technical discussions, and aligning teams around clear architectural decisions
• Partner with Platform Engineering on shared service patterns, Temporal, observability, secrets, and CI/CD
• Partner with product, data, and downstream consumers on relevance, ranking signals, and API contracts
• Act as a technical multiplier through design reviews, code reviews, architectural guidance, and mentorship

Requirements:

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience
• Deep experience designing, building, and tuning search engines (Elasticsearch, Solr, OpenSearch, Vespa, or equivalent)
• Strong proficiency in Go, or a willingness to adopt it as a primary language
• Experience with real-time data pipelines (Kafka, event streaming) for search indexing
• Strong instincts for relevance and ranking, with the ability to translate product goals into ranking signals and evaluate them with data
• Excellent written and verbal communication around collaborative system design and technical decision-making
• A pragmatic, collaborative mindset with strong ownership and systems thinking
• Experience leading a major search re-architecture or building from scratch is strongly preferred
• Vespa experience is a significant plus
• Experience with workflow orchestration (Temporal, Airflow, or equivalent) is a plus
• Familiarity with geospatial systems and spatial filtering is a plus