Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Search & Retrieval Infrastructure

Pinecone
New York
Workplace: HybridFull timeUSD 190,000 - 270,000 annuallyFunction: Software EngineeringExperience: 6+ yearsSkills: ["Architectural depth","Distributed systems mindset","Ownership","Product thinking","Ambiguity navigation"]

Design and build core components of a next-generation knowledge retrieval system for agentic AI. Own platform and backend architecture for semantic and hybrid retrieval, indexing pipelines, and retrieval orchestration. Improve retrieval quality with evaluation and observability frameworks, and optimize latency, throughput, and cost for large-scale workloads. Drive technical direction for reliability and security while designing APIs for human developers and autonomous agents.

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Pinecone
Pinecone
2 days ago

Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Search & Retrieval Infrastructure

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Canonical indexed version, validated from employer's careers page.

Source: Company careers pageValidated by: Fursa AI
Last checked: 5 hours agoStatus: Live

Job Summary

Design and build core components of a next-generation knowledge retrieval system for agentic AI. Own platform and backend architecture for semantic and hybrid retrieval, indexing pipelines, and retrieval orchestration. Improve retrieval quality with evaluation and observability frameworks, and optimize latency, throughput, and cost for large-scale workloads. Drive technical direction for reliability and security while designing APIs for human developers and autonomous agents.
Location: New York
Workplace: Hybrid
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Software Engineering
Seniority: Mid level

Key Responsibilities

  • •Design and build scalable platform components for advanced retrieval, including query planning, semantic/hybrid search, metadata-aware search, and LLM generation.
  • •Design and build optimized indexing pipelines for structured and unstructured data.
  • •Build backend services for semantic/hybrid retrieval, knowledge graph construction, and retrieval orchestration.
  • •Improve retrieval quality using evaluation and observability frameworks.
  • •Design and optimize APIs for internal and external users and autonomous agent consumers, while improving reliability and security.

Pay and Benefits

Salary: USD 190,000 - 270,000 annually
Perks:Health InsuranceDentalVision401kEquityPaid ParentalFlexible TimeLearning BudgetRemote Work

Key Requirements

  • •Ship production-grade backend systems for large-scale environments (typically 6+ years), with strong focus on throughput, latency, and maintainability.
  • •Build high-throughput indexing pipelines for both unstructured and structured data.
  • •Have deep experience with semantic search, vector databases, hybrid retrieval strategies, and/or traditional search engines like Elastic or OpenSearch.
  • •Understand Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and orchestration patterns, including embeddings, query planning, and metadata filtering.
  • •Expert in at least one major language (Go, Rust, C++, Java, or Python) and familiarity with infrastructure tools like Kubernetes, observability frameworks, and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or Pulumi).
Experience:6+ yearsAIVector databasesSearchRAGDistributed systemsSaaS
Skills:Architectural depthDistributed systems mindsetOwnershipProduct thinkingAmbiguity navigation
Languages:GoRustC++JavaPython
Tech Stack:GoRustC++JavaPythonKubernetesTerraformPulumiObservabilityInfrastructure-as-codeElasticOpenSearchVector databaseSemantic searchHybrid retrievalRAGQuery planningMetadata filteringKnowledge graphLLM

Company Brief

Pinecone
Pinecone provides a purpose-built vector database that enables scalable, high-performance similarity search and retrieval for AI applications, acting as long-term memory for LLMs and powering production search, RAG, and recommendation systems.
Industry: Data Infrastructure
Company Size: Medium (51 to 250 employees)
Growth: Scaleup
Valuation: USD 500M to 1B
Funding: Series B
Headquarters: New York, United States
Founded: 2019
Glassdoor
Glassdoor: 4.3
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