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