Salary Range: $140,000 – $160,000
IP.com develops cutting-edge solutions for corporations, universities, and professionals who invent, innovate, or are involved in the innovation life cycle. We design, build, and operate a highly sophisticated SaaS platform to support our customers, including a patented, proprietary retrieval engine that leverages advanced language modeling and deep learning techniques.
We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer with deep expertise in search engines / information retrieval, and strong modern C++ skills to expand and complement our engineering team. This role is ideal for an engineer who enjoys building high-performance retrieval systems, working close to the metal when needed, and applying (and advancing) machine learning with strong mathematical rigor—not just integrating off-the-shelf models, but contributing to ML innovation and core algorithmic improvements.
You will work with a small, highly capable team on state-of-the-art information retrieval technology in a production SaaS environment.
What You’ll Do
- Design, build, and optimize core search/retrieval systems, including indexing, query processing, ranking, and relevance improvements.
- Write high-performance, scalable software, primarily in C++ (with some Java, Python, or other languages as appropriate).
- Build low-latency, robust production systems with strong testing practices, CI/CD, and production monitoring/observability.
- Develop and improve ranking and ML-driven retrieval techniques, including feature engineering, model integration, evaluation, and experimentation—grounded in strong math/statistics.
- Contribute to ML innovation: propose, prototype, and productionize new approaches (not just “tool usage”), including algorithmic and architectural improvements to model training/inference and retrieval quality.
- Collaborate across the team on architecture, design reviews, implementation, testing, and iterative delivery.
- Troubleshoot and resolve performance and correctness issues across deployment environments; lead root-cause analysis when needed.
- Independently research, prototype, and deliver solutions to complex retrieval and ML problems.
- Provide estimates for deliverables and reliably meet commitments.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related discipline, plus 5+ years of relevant software engineering experience (or equivalent practical experience).
- Expert proficiency in modern C++ (performance-aware programming, memory management, concurrency, profiling/optimization).
- Strong CS fundamentals: algorithms, data structures, design patterns, concurrent programming, distributed systems, and performance optimization.
- Practical experience building on Linux with common command-line tools and development workflows.
Desired Qualifications
- Significant experience with search engines / information retrieval, such as:
- indexing pipelines, inverted indexes, tokenization/normalization, compression
- query parsing/execution, scoring/ranking pipelines, learning-to-rank
- relevance evaluation, metrics
- Strong foundation in math and ML, e.g., linear algebra, probability/statistics, optimization, and deep learning fundamentals.
- Demonstrated ability to innovate in ML (e.g., novel modeling approaches, retrieval/ranking improvements, training/inference optimization, new loss functions/features, new evaluation methods)—beyond simply applying existing frameworks.
- Experience with NLP and modern retrieval approaches (e.g., embeddings, hybrid lexical+semantic retrieval, transformer-based methods, approximate nearest neighbor search).
- Experience integrating and modifying open-source systems (e.g., retrieval libraries, ANN frameworks, ML toolchains) and making them production-grade.
- Experience designing and building REST services and scalable distributed systems for production workloads.
Desired Qualifications
- Must be either a U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident (“Green Card holder”) to comply with ITAR/Export Control regulations.
- Must have the ability to travel within the continental U.S. (though travel is uncommon).
- Must have the ability to sit for long periods of time.
- Benefits include 401(k) Plan; Medical, Dental and Life Insurance; Health Savings, Flexible Spending, and Dependent Care Accounts; Paid holidays, vacation, and sick time.
To apply for this position, please send your resume to careers@ip.com
IP.com/TextWise is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The company and its affiliates recruit and hire qualified candidates without regard to race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, veteran or disability status, medical condition, marital status, or any other factor prohibited by federal, state, provincial, and municipal laws.
