Principal Engineer, Search
Remote - Global
- Engineering
About Shopify
Opportunity is not evenly distributed. Shopify puts independence within reach for anyone with a dream to start a business. We propel entrepreneurs and enterprises to scale the heights of their potential. Since 2006, we’ve grown to over 8,300 employees and generated over $1 trillion in sales for millions of merchants in 175 countries.
This is life-defining work that directly impacts people’s lives as much as it transforms your own. This is putting the power of the few in the hands of the many, is a future with more voices rather than fewer, and is creating more choices instead of an elite option.
About you
Moving at our pace brings a lot of change, complexity, and ambiguity—and a little bit of chaos. Shopifolk thrive on that and are comfortable being uncomfortable. That means Shopify is not the right place for everyone.
- Care deeply about what you do and about making commerce better for everyone
- Excel by seeking professional and personal hypergrowth
- Keep up with an unrelenting pace (the week, not the quarter)
- Be resilient and resourceful in face of ambiguity and thrive on (rather than endure) change
- Bring critical thought and opinion
- Embrace differences and disagreement to get shit done and move forward
- Work digital-first for your daily work
About the role
Shopify is seeking an experienced Principal Search Engineer to drive best-in-class search and discovery experiences, company-wide. You will be working closely with multiple teams who are designing and implementing cutting-edge, AI-powered search and discovery solutions, directly empowering our merchants. We're all about creating tangible solutions that make a real difference in the day to day lives of entrepreneurs: whether for buyers looking for products, partners searching our APIs or merchants looking for the latest offerings in the app store.
If you thrive on change, and are constantly seeking growth and higher mastery, then this is the right place for you. At Shopify, we operate on low process and high trust, and we're not afraid to step out of our comfort zones to push the boundaries of what's possible. So if you're ready to join our team of driven crafters building world-class search and discovery experiences, then we want to hear from you.
Responsibilities:
Challenge orthodox approaches and drive innovation through big bets that can transform Shopify's search capabilities
Elevate Shopify's software systems to new global maxima, by leveraging the latest trends and best practices in search technology
Help teams develop and implement search algorithms, indexing strategies, and relevance tuning through prototyping and coaching on best practices
Help Shopify realize search performance, scalability, and reliability at the scale of millions of merchants
Collaborate with data science and analytics teams to leverage machine learning and natural language processing techniques
Work with other technical leaders to set and drive technical aim towards a performant and extensible Shopify
Deliver a great developer experience so the rest of Shopify can leverage what we’ve built
Contribute to the engineering discipline of Shopify through community efforts (internal or external), craft quality, or efforts to raise the bar, continuing to have Shopify be an industry leader in engineering
Drive new platform investment through research, development, experimentation, and strategic thinking
Mentor and coach craft leaders, and take part in shaping culture to build a healthy and impactful team
What you bring to the team:
Demonstrated mastery of relevance engineering, with a deep understanding of search and recommendation systems powered by Elasticsearch, Solr, Lucene, and/or other vector databases
Experience championing and delivering on complex technical projects involving a wide range of engineering teams, and producing measurable impact
Effective collaboration with staff-plus level technical leaders across multiple orgs and teams: building trust, influencing direction, and fostering collaboration
Experience working with and influencing the open source community and/or cloud vendors
Excitement to dive into the codebase and influence by prototyping and building
Strong communication and collaboration skills