Senior/Staff Backend Engineer - Search

Why join us?

We’re a global tech company, just not the kind you’re picturing.

Sure, we’ve got catered lunches, team events, cool merch, and yes... dogs in the office. But that’s not why people join.

Our team of nearly a thousand people wakes up every day to make our product and our customers’ lives better. At SafetyCulture, you’ll hear “yes, let’s give it a shot” more often than “that’s not how we do things here.”

People join because we’re building tools that make work better for the 3 billion people who keep the world moving - factory floor operators, baggage handlers, truck drivers, servers, store assistants. The ones who make things happen. We’ve got the scale and innovation you’d expect from big tech. The difference? No endless layers of sign-off. No corporate theatre. Just smart, experienced people solving real problems fast .

The scale is big. But the ownership’s personal. Every full-time team member gets equity - real skin in the game. When we grow, you do too. We’re not perfect, no company is. But this next chapter of our growth is about scaling with intelligence, not just size - fueled by operational maturity, a clear vision, and a strong focus on AI.

This is big tech impact, without the big tech ick. If that excites you more than it scares you, you’ll fit right in.

In this role you can expect to

• Design, build and operate large-scale search across front end and back end, in a stack of React, TypeScript, Golang, PostgreSQL and OpenSearch running on AWS.
• Own the search relevance and retrieval-quality. Define how relevance is measured, then drive it up through ranking, query pipelines, and tuning.
• Lead search architecture: indexing strategy, hybrid retrieval (combining lexical text search with semantic/vector search), embeddings, and ranking, including the trade-offs each involves.
• Build AI-native applications, connecting retrieval to LLM-powered experiences (e.g. RAG), and stay at the bleeding edge of agentic coding tools.
• Provide technical leadership guiding search architecture, execution, and cross-functional collaboration to deliver impactful outcomes.
• Own search feature delivery end-to-end: breaking down requirements with stakeholders, partnering with Product and Design, supporting other engineers, and ensuring successful delivery.
• Articulate effort-vs-impact trade-offs, including build-vs-buy decisions.
• Keep search operable at scale, performance, observability, and cost as data volume grows.
• Drive high-performance team outcomes by setting rigorous engineering standards, mentoring peers, and improving team practices for quality, velocity, and collaboration.
• Demonstrate SafetyCulture's values (Think Customer; Open, Honest, Always; Better as a Team; Be Bold, Bring Action).

You may be a great fit for this role if you have some of the following

• Deep search / information-retrieval expertise: lexical text search (inverted indexes, BM25-style ranking), semantic and vector search (embeddings, approximate nearest-neighbour), hybrid retrieval, and relevance tuning.
• Hands-on with RAG: chunking, retrieval pipelines, grounding model outputs, and evaluating retrieval quality.
• Proven track record building search capability into new or existing applications that retrieve information at scale in a multi-tenanted architecture.
• Strong OpenSearch / Elasticsearch operating experience at scale, including how segment merging works and the operational challenges that architecture presents.
• A systems thinker who decomposes large problems into small ones and teaches less experienced engineers to do the same.
• Works autonomously and is comfortable making the call without waiting on sign-off; co-owns technical and product direction rather than building to someone else's spec.
• Influences where the product goes, not just how it gets built.
• Thrives in a small team at a fast pace, comfortable with little formal process and structure.
• If you have used turbopuffer in production before, let us know!

What Do I Get Access To When Working at SafetyCulture?

• Equity with high growth potential, and a competitive salary.
• Access to professional and personal training and development opportunities.
• Participation in hackathons, workshops, and lunch & learn sessions.
• Community involvement, open source work, attending talks and events, and experimenting with new technologies