Senior Search Engineer – Elasticsearch/OpenSearch (f/m/d)

kfzteile24 is Germany's leading digital company for car parts and automotive equipment. As a Berlin-based multichannel company, we own successful online shops like kfzteile24.de, autoteile24.de, and carpardoo in multiple European countries. We are Germany's best-known brand in the online aftermarket. With expert advice, a wide range of products and fast, reliable deliveries, we ensure individual mobility for our customers.

As a Senior Search Engineer (f/m/d), you will play a key role in architecting and operating the core services that power our search and product discovery capabilities. Our search has to solve a unique challenge: mapping customer queries and inquiries regarding their vehicles to millions of spare parts within milliseconds. You will join a cross-functional team dedicated to building a high-performance, automotive-aware search solution. Using Java, OpenSearch, and related technologies on our AWS infrastructure, you will design and optimize a system where speed, relevance, ranking, and precision are the top priorities.

What we offer

• Permanent employment contract and 30 days vacation

• Possibility of home office 3 days a week

• Internal and external training opportunities

• Up to 50% employee discount in our branches and workshops

• Various health and sport offers (e.g. Bike-Leasing, VDU glasses)

• Additional benefits such as language courses via Babbel, company pension plan, corporate benefits

Your responsibility

• Search Architecture: Design and implement scalable, low-latency search services in Java, focusing on OpenSearch/Elasticsearch cluster architecture.

• Relevance Tuning: Own the end-to-end search experience by tuning Query DSL, scoring functions, and analyzers to handle complex vehicle-fitment logic.

• Performance Engineering: Ensure high availability and low latency under high traffic conditions through efficient sharding, indexing strategies, and caching.

• Data Modeling: Collaborate on API and data model designs to support highly structured automotive data, ensuring relevant and personalized search results.

• Full Lifecycle Ownership: From architectural discussions and code reviews to deployment and continuous monitoring (Observability).

• Mentorship: Act as the subject matter expert for Search within the engineering community.