Level

ClickUp

Senior Backend Engineer, Search

ClickUp is hiring a Senior Backend Engineer, Search for a remote role open to applicants in United States. It pays $200k-$250k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on ClickUp.

Level's read on this job

  • On Level's scale, this software engineer role is Works on AI ●●●○: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
  • The listed pay starts 19% above the typical software engineer posting on Level.
  • The posting lists this role as remote.
  • Tools and skills the posting cites include NLP.
  • Level lists 48 other open roles at ClickUp.

AI in this role

nlp

At ClickUp, we're building the future of work: the first truly converged AI workspace unifying tasks, docs, chat, calendar, and enterprise search, all supercharged by context-driven AI. We are an AI-native company. Every team member is expected to leverage AI daily, and we evaluate AI fluency as part of our hiring process. Join us and help redefine what's possible. 🚀

ClickUp is seeking a talented and experienced Senior Search Engineer to join our team and help revolutionize our search capabilities. As a key member of our engineering team, you'll be responsible for optimizing and enhancing our search functionality, which is a critical feature of our platform and underpins our AI efforts.

Your impact at ClickUp

As a Senior Engineer on the Search squad, you'll be responsible for designing, optimizing, and scaling our search infrastructure. Our platform is built as backend services on top of Postgres and OpenSearch, focused on real-time search ingestion and serving. You'll work hands-on with these systems to ensure users can instantly find exactly what they need across their workspace. Your expertise will directly contribute to making ClickUp the most intuitive and responsive productivity platform available.

Core Responsibilities

  • Design and implement robust search solutions that scale with our rapidly growing user base

  • Improve search relevance, accuracy, and speed to deliver the most relevant results to users at blazing fast speeds

  • Improve our real-time indexing pipelines to ensure search results remain up-to-date

  • Create measurement frameworks to evaluate and improve search quality

  • Build and enhance vector search capabilities to power next-generation search experiences

  • Collaborate with AI, backend, and product teams to integrate search into new features

  • Troubleshoot complex search-related issues at scale

  • Design and implement robust search solutions that scale with our rapidly growing user base

  • Improve search relevance, accuracy, and speed to deliver the most relevant results to users at blazing fast speeds

  • Improve out real-time indexing pipelines to ensure search results remain up-to-date

  • Create measurement frameworks to evaluate and improve search quality

  • Build and enhance vector search capabilities to power next-generation search experiences

  • Collaborate with AI, backend, and product teams to integrate search into new features

  • Troubleshoot complex search-related issues at scale

Technical Requirements:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

  • 5+ years of experience as a search engineer or in a directly related role

  • Hands-on production experience with OpenSearch or ElasticSearch (strongly preferred); Solr experience considered but less ideal given its age

  • Experience with high-scale, real-time data ingestion and search serving in a backend services context.

  • Proven ability to optimize query parsing, indexing, and relevance tuning for search systems

  • Experience measuring and optimizing search quality

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Background in search ranking, relevance algorithms, and information retrieval

  • Hands-on experience with vector embeddings and semantic search implementations

  • Experience with TypeScript in backend systems

  • Track record of architecting search solutions that maintain performance under heavy load

  • Experience applying machine learning and NLP to enhance search relevance

Join Our Mission

At ClickUp, we're committed to building the future of productivity software. As our Search Engineer, you'll play a crucial role in shaping the core functionality of our platform and driving our AI initiatives forward. Join us in our mission to make the world more productive!

#LI-REMOTE

#LI-AK2
#LI-CC1

   

Equal Opportunity Employer

ClickUp is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.

Privacy Notice

ClickUp collects and processes personal data in accordance with applicable data protection laws. You can find further details by viewing our Global Candidate Privacy Notice.

If you are a Philippine Job Applicant, please also see our Philippine Data Privacy Notice for further details.

Visa Sponsorship

Please note we are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa for roles outside of engineering and product at this time. Sponsorship for engineering and product roles is not guaranteed, but is instead based on the business needs for that specific role at that time. Please reach out to the recruiter with any questions.

Fraud Alert

ClickUp Talent Acquisition will only initiate contact via an @clickup.com email or through our official careers portal on clickup.com. We will never request fees, payments, or sensitive personal information. Please disregard any offers received outside these channels and report them to support@clickup.com.

AI Processing Notice

ClickUp may use artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to help review and screen candidates' employment applications against role-related criteria. These tools support, but do not replace, human decision‑making. If you have questions or need an accommodation in the recruitment process, please contact us at AskPeople@ClickUp.com.

How we rate this

Senior Backend Engineer, Search at ClickUp rates 62 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.

  1. ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
  2. ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
  3. ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
  4. ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

NLP

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

Pay

This job starts at
$200k
Typical software engineer job
$168k

This posting starts 19% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

  1. What NLP problem have you worked on, and how did you measure whether it actually worked?
  2. Describe a typical day in a role like this one: which parts run through AI directly?
  3. If you removed AI from this role, what would be left, and how do you decide what still needs a human?

Adapt your resume

  • List these exact terms on your resume: NLP. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
  • Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
  • Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.

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