Job description

We are seeking a skilled Python Developer to join our Search Platform team at SearchSense.ai. SearchSense is an AI-powered semantic search platform that helps businesses transform product discovery and knowledge access powering experiences for hundreds of enterprises with measurable impact (43% average search conversion lift, sub-10-second cited answers).

This role focuses on building and optimizing the core search service that sits at the heart of our product query understanding, ranking and relevance, faceted navigation, and the high-performance APIs that deliver fast, accurate results at scale. The ideal candidate has strong backend development expertise, hands-on experience with search engines like OpenSearch/Elasticsearch, and a passion for making search fast, relevant, and reliable.

Role & responsibilities

Search Development

- Build and optimize search functionality using OpenSearch query construction, relevance scoring, faceting/aggregations, autocomplete, and synonym handling.
- Implement and tune hybrid search combining dense (semantic embeddings) and sparse(keyword/TF-IDF) retrieval.
- Develop and maintain search and autocomplete APIs using Python and FastAPI.
- Improve ranking and relevance through reranking, boosting rules, and query rewriting.

Performance & Reliability

- Optimize end-to-end search latency using multi-layer caching (in-memory, Redis, and OpenSearch).
- Profile and tune queries, index mappings, and data pipelines for speed and scale.
- Ensure search services are stable, observable, and production-ready across environments.

Data & Integration

- Integrate search with backend services, PostgreSQL, and data ingestion pipelines.
- Support indexing workflows that keep search data fresh and consistent.




- Troubleshoot search quality and performance issues across the stack.

Code Quality & Collaboration

- Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code following best practices.
- Conduct code reviews, participate in sprint ceremonies, and contribute to continuous improvement.
- Collaborate with ML, data, and product teams to evaluate and improve search relevance.

Preferred candidate profile

- 6-8 years of backend development experience, with strong proficiency in Python.
- Hands-on experience with OpenSearch or Elasticsearch (query DSL, mappings, analyzers, aggregations).
- Experience building REST APIs, ideally with FastAPI (or Flask/Django).
- Solid working knowledge of SQL / PostgreSQL.
- Strong computer science fundamentals data structures, algorithms, and search/ranking concepts.
- Experience with version control systems like Git.
- Understanding of writing testable code (e.g., pytest) and API contracts.

Nice to have skills:

- Experience with semantic search, embeddings, and vector search (e.g.,sentence-transformers, BGE, KNN).
- Familiarity with reranking models and relevance evaluation/A-B testing.
- Experience with Redis and multi-layer caching strategies.
- Hands-on with AWS (Lambda, ECS, Batch, S3, Secrets Manager).
- Experience with e-commerce search, faceted navigation, or product discovery.
- Knowledge of Docker and CI/CD pipelines.
- Experience working in an Agile/Scrum environment; Jira/Confluence a plus.

Soft Skills

- Solid communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
- Detail-oriented with a passion for fast, relevant, high-quality search experiences.
- Ability to prioritize tasks in fast-paced, deadline-driven environments.
- Problem-solving mindset with a desire to learn and grow.

📌 Senior Python Developer (Chennai)
🏢 D2R AI Labs
📍 Chennai