Staff Backend Engineer, Search

At ClickUp, we're building the future of work: the first truly converged AI workspace unifying tasks, docs, chat, calendar, and enterprise search, all supercharged by context-driven AI. We are an AI-native company. Every team member is expected to leverage AI daily, and we evaluate AI fluency as part of our hiring process. Join us and help redefine what's possible. 🚀

ClickUp is seeking a talented Staff Search Engineer to join our team and help revolutionize our search capabilities. As a key member of our engineering team, you'll be responsible for optimizing and enhancing our search functionality, which is a critical feature of our platform and underpins our AI efforts.

As a Staff Engineer on the search squad, you'll be responsible for designing, optimizing, and scaling our search infrastructure. You'll work with OpenSearch / ElasticSearch technologies to ensure users can instantly find exactly what they need across their workspace. Your expertise will directly contribute to making ClickUp the most intuitive and responsive productivity platform available.

• Design and implement robust search solutions that scale with our rapidly growing user base

• Improve search relevance, accuracy, and speed to deliver the most relevant results to users at blazing fast speeds

• Improve out real-time indexing pipelines to ensure search results remain up-to-date

• Create measurement frameworks to evaluate and improve search quality

• Build and enhance vector search capabilities to power next-generation search experiences

• Collaborate with AI, backend, and product teams to integrate search into new features

• Troubleshoot complex search-related issues at scale

• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to engineering best practices

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

• 7+ years of experience as a search engineer or in a directly related role

• Strong expertise in search technologies, particularly OpenSearch / ElasticSearch

• Experience measuring and optimizing search quality

• Experience with high-volume, distributed data processing systems

• Proven ability to optimize query parsing, indexing, and relevance tuning for search systems

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills

• Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively across teams

• Hands-on experience with vector embeddings and semantic search implementations

• Experience with TypeScript in backend systems

• Track record of architecting search solutions that maintain performance under heavy load

• Experience applying machine learning and NLP to enhance search relevance

• Knowledge of information retrieval concepts and search evaluation metrics

At ClickUp, we're committed to building the future of productivity software. As our Search Engineer, you'll play a crucial role in shaping the core functionality of our platform and driving our AI initiatives forward. Join us in our mission to make the world more productive!

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Unsure if you meet all the qualifications of this job description but are deeply excited about the role? We hire based on ambition, grit, and a passion for improving the way people work. If you think ClickUp is the company for you, we encourage you to apply!

At ClickUp, we assess every candidate based on the potential impact they can have. We hire the best people for the job and support each person’s journey to build their boldest career.

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ClickUp is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.

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