Principal Search & Recommendation Engineer

About the position

We are seeking a Principal Search & Recommendation Engineer to lead the design and evolution of intelligent systems that power discovery and personalization across the Highspot platform. This role combines deep technical expertise, cross-functional collaboration, and strategic impact to shape how millions of users find the content, insights, and tools they need to win. You'll work at the intersection of machine learning (both predictive and generative), information retrieval, and large-scale systems-helping elevate our AI capabilities while mentoring and guiding engineers across the team.

Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end development of modern search and recommendation systems, from architecture to production deployment.
• Drive technical strategy and innovation in search relevance, personalized ranking, semantic search, and ML-powered retrieval/grounding.
• Collaborate with product, design, and data teams to define and deliver intelligent user experiences.
• Influence platform-level decisions on data pipelines, experimentation frameworks, and performance optimization.
• Mentor engineers, foster technical excellence, and promote a culture of learning and innovation.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience building and scaling search or recommendation systems in production environments.
• Deep expertise in information retrieval, ranking algorithms, collaborative filtering, and/or neural search techniques.
• Strong programming skills in Python, Java, or Scala; experience with ML and IR frameworks such as Elasticsearch, FAISS, TensorFlow, or PyTorch.
• Familiarity with LLMs, embeddings, and modern vector search infrastructure.
• Proven leadership in cross-functional environments with a track record of mentoring and guiding technical teams.
• Strong grasp of MLOps practices and experience with cloud-native ML infrastructure (e.g., AWS, GCP).

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with personalization, multi-objective optimization, or exploration/exploitation strategies.
• Published work in top-tier IR or ML conferences, or contributions to relevant open-source projects.
• Experience driving different experimentation practices for fast iterating search/recommendation quality cases.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, disability, and life benefits
• Health Savings Account (HSA) with employer contribution
• 401(k) Matching with immediate vesting on employer match
• Flexible PTO
• 8 paid holidays and 5 paid days for Annual Holiday Week
• Quarterly Recharge Fridays (paid days off for mental health recharge)
• 18 weeks paid parental leave
• Access to Coaches and Therapists through Modern Health
• 2 volunteer days per year
• Commuting benefits