Scale - Senior Software Engineer
Paris
Software Engineering – Scale/Platform /
Full-time /
Hybrid
About the company
Meilisearch is redefining the future of search for developers and end-users alike.
Our open-source, Rust-powered search engine delivers lightning-fast, typo-tolerant, and hyper-relevant results—out-of-the-box, with intuitive APIs and minimal configuration.
From powering the discoverability of 300,000+ AI models at Hugging Face to transforming retail experiences for Louis Vuitton, Meilisearch is trusted by thousands of organizations and developers worldwide.
Since 2018, we’ve grown into a remote-first team across 8+ countries, backed by leading investors including Felicis Ventures, CRV, Seedcamp, and Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch. Our vibrant community drives innovation, with every design spec, SDK, and feature built transparently in collaboration with contributors.
Join us and help shape the next generation of search—where speed, simplicity, and developer experience come first.
About the Scale team
In order to ensure Meilisearch continues to scale efficiently while maintaining top performance and cost stability, we are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Scale Team.
At Meilisearch, the Scale Team is responsible for tackling the scalability challenges of our product and infrastructure. Our success metrics are uptime, search latency, indexing speed (time to search), and infrastructure cost stability.
You will report directly to the Head of Engineering and collaborate closely with other backend, infrastructure, and engine engineers.
What you’ll be doing
As a Senior Software Engineer in the Scale Team, your role will include:
Scalability & Performance
- Designing, implementing and maintaining scalable solutions to support our growing customer base and evolving support needs
- Continuously improving search latency and indexing speed by working in collaboration with the engine developers
- Optimizing infrastructure costs while maintaining performance
- Building and maintaining monitoring and visibility tools to track key performance indicators
Incident Management & Operations
- Participate in on-call rotation and lead incident response when technical issues arise
- Drive post-incident reviews and implement improvements to prevent future occurrences
Adaptability & Fast Iteration
- Actively contributing to the team’s processes and collaboration to continuously improve our velocity and delivery
- Diving into the Meilisearch engine’s internals to identify improvements in our global system
- Occasionally contributing to frontend improvements (React + TypeScript) when needed
As any Meilisearch member
- Promoting the easy-to-use mindset: contributing to developer experience discussions about the Engine API and Cloud interface
- Sharing your knowledge and bringing visibility around your work for technical and non-technical teams
Our ideal profile
Soft skills
- Excellent collaboration skills with developers across disciplines
- Ability to balance technical depth with strategic thinking
- Comfortable making tough technical decisions and aligning stakeholders
- Adaptable and able to thrive in ambiguous situations
- Flexible mindset, willing to tackle problems outside your initial scope
Hard skills
Must-have:
- Significant experience as a backend and/or infrastructure engineer
- Strong knowledge of Ruby on Rails and cloud infrastructure (K8s, AWS, Terraform)
- Familiarity with performance & cost optimization and scalability challenges
- Ability to contribute occasionally to frontend code (React, TypeScript)
- Interest in learning the basics of Rust and understanding the Meilisearch engine’s architecture
Nice to have:
- Familiarity with observability and monitoring tools
- Experience in infrastructure and software benchmarking
- Familiarity with distributed database/system
- Experience with search engines or large-scale data systems
€90,545 - €106,651 a year
Why you'll enjoy working with us
- Permanent full-time contract,
- Stock options,
- Protected Fridays & flexible working hours,
- If you’re working from home, we will provide either a stipend for you to equip yourself, or an access to Fleex (Europe),
- Access to a mental health platform (moka.care) + 6 sessions with a coach/trained therapist,
- We support physical health and provide either a membership or a stipend for your sports activities each month,
- 3 months paid parental leave,
- 6 weeks paid time off,
- Management training to freshly hired and newly appointed managers,
- We all get together at least once a year for a company offsite.
Not sure you meet all qualifications? Let us decide! Research shows that women and members of other under-represented groups tend not to apply to jobs when they think they may not meet every qualification, when, in fact, they often do! We strive to develop an inclusive work environment that reflects the diversity of our open-source community. We strongly encourage you to apply!
