Senior Software Engineer, Search & AI

Muck Rack is trusted by thousands of organizations around the world to understand how their brands show up across news, social media and AI-generated answers.

Our AI-powered platform connects the entire PR workflow in one place, helping communications teams manage media relationships, understand the conversations shaping their brands, take action and measure their impact. Combined with analyst-led Media Intelligence and advisory services, Muck Rack turns signals into insights and insights into action.

Founder-controlled and growing  profitably and sustainably, we have the freedom to build forward-thinking products, put our customers first, and offer an inclusive culture that welcomes diverse perspectives.

We’re looking for a collaborative, self-motivated Senior Software Engineer, Search & AI to join our growing team.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll help build and evolve the customer-facing search experiences that help users discover relevant, high-quality content, along with the backend systems that power them. You’ll work across the stack, with a slight emphasis on frontend development, and collaborate closely with engineers, Product, and Design to deliver intuitive search experiences backed by reliable, scalable search and data systems.

What You'll Do

Own and deliver customer-facing search features and workflows across frontend and backend systems, from technical planning through production

Build AI-powered product experiences end to end, from the services behind them to the interfaces that make their output useful and trustworthy

Build intuitive, responsive user experiences using Vue while contributing to the Python and Django services that power them

Design and improve search, indexing, and retrieval systems that support high-quality content discovery across large volumes of data

Build and maintain features and data workflows that leverage technologies such as Elasticsearch, Kafka, Celery, and MySQL

Make thoughtful technical decisions and trade-offs that balance customer experience, delivery speed, performance, reliability, and long-term maintainability

Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and engineering teammates to shape solutions, clarify requirements, and deliver high-quality customer experiences

Troubleshoot complex production issues and drive improvements to the performance, reliability, observability, and maintainability of the systems you work on

Participate in an on-call and incident response rotation, helping diagnose and resolve production issues and improve system reliability over time

To Be Set Up for Success in This Role, You'll Need to Have

5+ years of professional software engineering experience building and maintaining production software

Strong experience working across frontend and backend systems and independently delivering features throughout the application stack

Proficiency with Python or a similar programming language and experience with Django or a comparable web framework

Experience building polished, maintainable user-facing applications with Vue.js or another modern JavaScript framework

Experience with Elasticsearch or a comparable search technology, or significant experience working with data-intensive systems

Experience making technical trade-offs within complex production systems while balancing immediate delivery needs with long-term quality

Experience diagnosing production issues and contributing to the reliability and operational health of the systems you build

Experience with TypeScript in a large codebase

Experience with design systems or shared component libraries

Flexibility to adjust working hours for overlap with teammates in US time zones

If Any of the Below Also Describe You, This Could Be an Exciting Opportunity

Experience with Kafka or other streaming or event-driven technologies

Experience with MySQL, Postgres, or other relational databases

Experience with Celery or other asynchronous task-processing systems

Experience building search, discovery, indexing, or information-retrieval features

Experience improving frontend architecture, performance, or complex customer-facing workflows

Experience working with high-traffic SaaS applications or systems that process large volumes of data

Experience building customer-facing features backed by LLMs or other AI models

Experience judging whether an AI-backed feature is actually working, through evaluation, testing, or user feedback

Interest in journalism, news, media, or social media

In Addition, We're Always Looking for Candidates Who

Communicate complex technical ideas clearly and collaborate effectively with both technical and non-technical partners

Take ownership of problems and drive work forward independently while knowing when to involve others

Take pride in building readable, testable, maintainable software while making pragmatic technical trade-offs

Approach ambiguous or complex problems thoughtfully and use sound judgment to identify effective solutions

Contribute to a strong engineering culture through thoughtful code reviews, knowledge sharing, feedback, and continuous improvement

Proactively incorporates AI tools into day-to-day work to improve productivity and accelerate delivery

Interview Overview

Below you'll find an outline of the interview plan for this role. Please note that this is what we expect the process to look like; we may ask you for supplemental information or require an additional step before making a final decision.

30 min interview with a member of our Talent Team

A 1 hour zoom interview with the hiring manager

Peer interviews with several team members

30-minute Bar Raiser

Travel & Team Engagement Expectations

This role requires up to 10% travel for team collaboration, customer engagements, and company events. As part of our commitment to building strong connections across our fully distributed team, attendance at our annual company offsite (typically held in Mexico) is expected.

Salary

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