Senior Search Backend Engineer New London, England, United Kingdom (Hybrid)

About commercetools

Real innovation starts with a strong foundation, and at commercetools, that comes from the perfect balance of our product and our people. Behind every leap forward is a collective of builders, explorers, doers, makers, and problem-solvers. The kind of people who not only pioneered a more flexible approach to commerce architecture but also shaped the culture of experimentation that approach unlocked. Together, they are the engine of commerce innovation today. At commercetools, we power the next era of commerce for our customers. Whether it’s AI-driven solutions that help enterprises make smarter business decisions, bridging digital and physical shopping experiences, or enabling entirely new ways for industries to connect with their customers, we help the world’s most ambitious companies experiment, scale, and grow without limits. Here, the best idea wins, not the loudest voice. You will have the tools, trust, and space to not only build the future of commerce but to build your own.

Your Impact

As our Senior Search Engineer, you’ll support the Search Foundation Team by developing a modern, integrated search experience for our customers, providing them with a search API for product discovery and the foundations of search capabilities across domains. You will:

• Design and implement search functionalities in a PaaS ecommerce Scala backend.
• Learn Scala and functional programming as your new main development tools.
• Develop search-related libraries based on ElasticSearch and MongoDB.
• Run and maintain a scalable search “infrastructure as code” on top of Kubernetes using terraform and multi-tenant architecture.
• Test software components regarding usability, functionality, and performance, and work closely with Product Management and DevOps.
• Take part in on-call rotation (with the worldwide distributed team) for production systems.

This role is hybrid, with three days a week spent in our Munich, Berlin, London or Valencia office.

What Sets You Apart

You're a creative problem-solver who is wired to find solutions. You confidently dive into complex challenges and have a talent for making them simple for others. Your curiosity drives you to constantly grow and contribute to an environment of trust and teamwork. Great ideas come from many paths, and your unique perspective matters more than checking every box. What matters most is the mindset you bring to the work. You bring:

• At least 5 years of experience as a Software Engineer working with languages on the JVM.
• Search-related experience (preferably ElasticSearch).
• Strong DevOps mindset as you will drive lots of infrastructure improvements.
• Interest in working with Scala using pragmatic functional programming patterns.
• Practical work experience in developing server-side systems using the JVM.
• Solid understanding of parallel and asynchronous programming, as well as non-blocking I/O.
• Experience in developing REST APIs and knowledge of scalable architectures (incl. sharding, replication, load balancing and failover).
• Fluent English for work in international teams.
• A genuine curiosity for using AI tools to work smarter and more effectively, paired with a drive to learn and put them into practice in your role.

Nice to Have:

• Experience developing REST APIs and knowledge of scalable event-driven architectures (incl., queues, notification topics, sharding, replication, load balancing, and failover).
• Experience working with Scala or other functional programming languages.
• Experience with infrastructure work and other technologies like Helm, Kubernetes, and Rust.

Because work and life are connected, our benefits are too. We’ve designed them to give you the security, flexibility, and opportunities you need to focus on what matters most.

• Comprehensive health benefits for you and your dependents, including access to OpenUp for personalized mental health support.
• Learning and development opportunities including an annual learning budget, access to self-paced learning platforms and language training, personalized coaching, mentorship, and leadership programs.
• Family Leave Plus gives you additional fully paid weeks of parental leave on top of government-provided leave, so you can spend more time with your new addition.
• Our equity participation program allows you to share in our success.

Your unique perspective is essential to our success. We are committed to building a team that reflects the world around us because we know it’s the only way to build the future. We celebrate our differences and have created a hiring process that’s fair, inclusive, and designed to let your talent shine. We proudly welcome applicants of every race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, and any other part of your identity that makes you who you are. As an equal opportunity employer, we believe that our strength lies in our diversity, and we invite you to be a part of our global community. We are all different and that is what makes us stronger! We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes our company better. At commercetools, we are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.