Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Search & Retrieval Infrastructure

What this role involves

This senior/staff software engineer role focuses on designing and building core components of Pinecone's next-generation knowledge retrieval system. Responsibilities include developing scalable backend services, indexing pipelines, and APIs for semantic and hybrid search, with a strong emphasis on distributed systems and AI infrastructure. The ideal candidate has 6+ years of experience in production-grade backend systems and deep knowledge of retrieval techniques like RAG and vector databases.

Skills this posting asks for

• semantic search
• vector databases
• hybrid retrieval
• elasticsearch
• opensearch
• go
• rust
• c++
• java
• python
• kubernetes
• cloud-native architectures
• observability
• terraform
• pulumi
• multi-tenant saas
• retrieval evaluation
• query planning
• agentic reasoning
• rag
• llm
• knowledge graph
• api design

Requirements

• 6 years of experience
• Level: staff

From the employer’s posting

About Pinecone Pinecone is the knowledge infrastructure for AI at scale. Its leading vector database and knowledge engine, Pinecone Nexus, power accurate, performant AI applications for more than 9,000 customers and 800,000 developers worldwide. Pinecone's mission is to make AI knowledgeable. Pine…