Backend Engineer - Search (all genders)
About You SE & Co. KG2 days ago
Hamburg, Germany or Berlin, GermanyMid Level
Responsibilities
- Develop the search engine behind ABOUT YOU, including query understanding, entity resolution, and semantic vector search.
- Build scalable backend APIs and search-index pipelines for entities, synonyms, and k-NN product vectors.
- Stream data from BigQuery into OpenSearch.
- Integrate Gemini, Vertex AI, embeddings, and LLM features with caching and fallback layers under tight latency budgets.
- Improve search relevance using golden lists, regression suites, and continuous A/B experiments.
- Shape architecture with the Tech Lead and collaborate with data analysts, engineers, and product managers.
Requirements
- At least 3 years of experience building scalable, low-latency backend APIs.
- Strong Node.js and TypeScript experience, or the ability to transition quickly from Java, Go, or Kotlin.
- Deep Elasticsearch or OpenSearch expertise, including mappings, custom analyzers, percolators, and scoring functions.
- Strong algorithmic understanding of ranked data, including merging, deduplication, score blending, and latency trade-offs.
- Experience serving model scores, embeddings, or LLM features in production.
- Fluent English communication skills and a pragmatic, data-curious mindset.
- Preferred: information retrieval and NLP fundamentals, including tokenization, multilingual search, and relevance evaluation frameworks.
- Preferred: vector search experience with k-NN/HNSW indices, SigLIP embeddings, and recall-versus-latency tuning.
- Preferred: LLM engineering experience, including prompt caching, timeout budgets, and Datadog LLM Observability.
- Preferred: familiarity with BigQuery, dbt, or Dagster pipelines.
Benefits
- Inclusive and welcoming work environment that values diverse backgrounds and perspectives.
- Team lunches, afterwork drinks, company events, and informal coffee breaks.
- Flat hierarchies, direct communication, ownership, and pragmatic decision-making.
About About You SE & Co. KG
ABOUT YOU SE & Co. KG operates an online fashion marketplace for European consumers and licenses commerce technology to brands via its SCAYLE platform. The group sells apparel and lifestyle products through its mobile app and aboutyou.com, and offers a cloud-based enterprise shop system under a license model to retailers. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Hamburg, it is a publicly listed company.