Senior Engineer Enterprise Search Platform

What You Need To Know

Open the door to a groundbreaking tech career with an industry leader. Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits is North America’s preeminent wine and spirits distributor, as well as a family-owned, privately held company with a 50+ year legacy of success. To create a new era in alcohol beverage sales and service, we’re heavily invested in the most transformative new technologies – and the most brilliant tech professionals. Southern Glazer’s was named by Newsweek as a Most Loved Workplace and is included on the Forbes lists for Largest Private Companies and Best Employers.

As a full-time employee, you can choose from a full menu of our Top Shelf Benefits, including comprehensive medical and prescription drug coverage, dental and vision plans, tax-saving Flexible Spending Accounts, life insurance plans, and a 401(k) plan. We also offer tuition reimbursement, a wellness program, parental leave, vacation accrual, paid sick leave, and more.

We offer continuous learning and career growth in a fast-paced environment where you are respected, your voice is heard, and technology is part of our strategy for success. If you’re looking to fill your glass with opportunity, come join our FAMILY.

Overview

The Senior Developer – Enterprise Search is responsible for independently developing and consistently redesigning/refactoring our search engine solutions to adapt to the needs of our customers, suppliers, and associates. The Ideal candidate will have experience with the Coveo Search Platform. If not, we also consider candidates with strong experience in Solr, Elasticsearch, or other similar platforms. This role requires a deep understanding of search engine relevancy tuning, recommendations, and personalization using AI/ML models. The candidate should also have extensive experience with REST APIs, familiarity with front-end technologies like react.js and micro front ends, and experience in B2B or B2C ecommerce search and recommendations.

As a senior developer, you will be part of a dynamic team with engineers of all experience levels who help each other build and grow technical and leadership skills while creating, deploying, and supporting production applications. In addition, senior developers may be involved in product and tool selection, configuration, security, resilience, performance tuning, and production monitoring as well as mentoring less experienced engineers.

Specialized Skills and Technologies

1. Proficiency in programming languages such as Java, Python, or JavaScript.
2. Strong experience with the Coveo Search platform, Solr, Elasticsearch, or similar.
3. Deep understanding of search engines, relevancy tuning, and search algorithms.
4. Experience with using AI/ML models to build relevancy ranking, recommendations, and personalization solutions.
5. Proficiency in developing and consuming REST APIs and experience with microservices architecture.
6. Familiarity with front-end technologies such as React, Angular, or Vue.js.
7. Experience with micro front ends architecture.
8. Knowledge of databases and data modeling.
9. Experience with cloud platforms and services (e.g., AWS, Azure).
10. Familiarity with batch processing and real-time data processing frameworks like Apache Spark or similar.
11. Data mapping and data quality experience is a plus.

Primary Responsibilities

1. Design, develop, and configure search engine indexes using Coveo, Solr, Elasticsearch, or similar platforms to ensure optimal performance and accuracy.
2. Conduct relevancy tuning and implement advanced search algorithms to improve search results, including configuring relevancy ranking, boost and bury, dynamic navigation, triggers, redirects, thesaurus, and stop words.
3. Develop and integrate recommendation and personalization systems using AI/ML technologies.
4. Configure and manage query pipelines and index data in the right format.
5. Integrate the search platform with other systems, such as ad managers and data sources like SQL databases and data lakes, to consume structured and unstructured data.
6. Capture site usage analytics and use customer behavior data to configure relevancy tuning algorithms, recommendation models, and personalization strategies.
7. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to gather requirements and deliver robust search solutions.
8. Develop and maintain REST APIs for search functionalities.
9. Work closely with front-end developers to integrate search functionalities into web applications using technologies like React and micro front ends.
10. Continuously monitor and improve search performance and user experience.
11. Stay up to date with the latest industry trends and best practices in search technologies and AI/ML.
12. Participate in Agile development processes and contribute to product thinking and design.

Additional Skills

1. Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work in a fast-paced environment.
2. Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
3. Experience working in agile development environments.
4. Ability to think from a product perspective and contribute to product design and strategy.
5. Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and DevSecOps practices.
6. Familiarity with version control systems like Git.

Minimum Qualifications

1. Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or relevant field.
2. 4+ years relevant work experience in search solution development and optimization.
3. 4+ years of working experience in B2B or B2C e-commerce search/recommendations and personalization, with a preference for B2B.
4. Proven experience with AI/ML technologies for relevancy ranking, recommendations, and personalization.
5. Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, and software design principles.
6. Experience operating in large sized teams and technology engagements.
7. Experience building and maintaining websites including working with content management platforms.
8. Exceptional customer management skills including consulting and training; strong desire for customer success.
9. Proven ability to navigate constant change and excel in dynamic situations while maintaining a clear line of communication with colleagues and stakeholders.
10. Experience with long-term operation, monitoring, and upgrade of enterprise software.

Agile Delivery Values

1. Openness – Team and stakeholders agree to be open about all work and challenges.
2. Commitment – Personally commit to achieving the goals of the team.
3. Respect – Respect your team members to be capable and independent.
4. Courage – You have the courage to do the right thing and work on tough problems.
5. Focus – Everyone focuses on the work in the sprint and the goal of the scrum team. Rise and fall as a team.

Physical Demands

Physical demands include a considerable amount of time sitting and typing/keyboarding, using a computer (e.g., keyboard, mouse, and monitor), or adding machine. Physical demands with activity or condition may include walking, bending, reaching, standing, squatting, and stooping. May require occasional lifting/lowering, pushing, carrying, or pulling up to 20lbs.

EEO Statement

Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits, an Affirmative Action/EEO employer, prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type and provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training. Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits provides competitive compensation based on estimated performance level consistent with the past relevant experience, knowledge, skills, abilities, and education of employees. Unless otherwise expressly stated, any pay ranges posted here are estimates from outside of Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits and do not reflect Southern Glazer's pay bands or ranges.