Senior Software Engineer, Smarsh
Professional Archive Search & Artificial Intelligence
$125-155k
+ Stock options
Cloud-based archiving and compliance solutions
Job no longer available
Cloud-based archiving and compliance solutions
1001+ employees
Job no longer available
$125-155k
+ Stock options
1001+ employees
Company mission
To enable customers to take advantage of the latest communication and collaboration tools, while staying ahead of compliance risk.
Role
Who you are
- We’re looking for someone who enjoys working collaboratively, values continuous learning, and communicates openly and respectfully. You support others, share knowledge, and contribute to an inclusive and positive team culture
- Experience building and operating software in a modern private cloud-based environment
- Strong background in distributed systems and search or data-intensive applications
- Experience with search technologies such as Lucene, Elasticsearch, or Solr, including how indexing and query systems work
- Hands-on experience with vector similarity search and vector databases (e.g., Qdrant, Milvus, Vespa, or similar)
- Familiarity with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) concepts and architectures
- Understanding of knowledge graphs or graph-based data modeling concepts
- Experience designing scalable data pipelines and working with streaming technologies such as Kafka
- A collaborative mindset, with openness to feedback and different perspectives
- Understanding of modern software development practices and Agile methodologies
- Ability to communicate technical concepts, progress, and trade-offs clearly
- Comfort working in evolving environments where requirements may change over time
- A proactive and thoughtful approach to solving complex problems
- Don't meet every requirement? Apply anyway! We value diverse candidates and encourage applications, even if you don't perfectly match the job description. Studies have shown that some strong candidates may self-select out of the interview process prematurely, at Smarsh we encourage an inclusive, high-performing environment
Desirable
- Around 6+ years of experience in software engineering, with experience in search or data systems
- Proficiency in Java or a similar backend programming language
- Experience deploying and managing applications in Kubernetes
- Familiarity with relational databases and query optimization (e.g., MS SQL or similar)
- Experience working with Linux-based systems
- Exposure to messaging systems such as Kafka or AMQ
- Experience contributing to or designing AI/ML-powered systems in production environments
- Participation in open-source projects or technical communities
- The ProArchive Application Development team embraces an AI-first mindset, continuously elevating developer productivity through tools like GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, and Claude Code. We’re seeking developers who are passionate about advancing their AI-assisted development skills and leveraging them to deliver innovative, high-impact solutions for Smarsh customers
What the job involves
- As a Senior Software Engineer on the Professional Archive Search team, you’ll help design, build, and evolve advanced search and data systems that power our platform
- Your work will focus on blending traditional search with modern AI-driven approaches, including vector search, knowledge graphs, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
- You’ll play a key role in enabling Smarsh clients to meet their compliance needs by delivering scalable, reliable, and high-performance search capabilities
- This includes working with high-dimensional data, real-time pipelines, and hybrid search systems
- You’ll collaborate with cross-functional partners across Product Management, Engineering, and Site Reliability to solve complex challenges and shape the future of search within our platform
- We’re looking for someone who is thoughtful, curious, and excited to work at the intersection of search and AI
- Support and empower your team by contributing to a collaborative, inclusive, and respectful work environment
- Partner with engineers and stakeholders to design and deliver scalable search and data solutions
- Help bridge traditional lexical search and modern semantic search approaches
- Design and implement hybrid search strategies combining keyword-based and vector-based retrieval
- Work with vector databases to manage and query high-dimensional embeddings
- Design and optimize retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, including handling long documents and retrieval quality
- Contribute to knowledge graph–driven approaches to enhance search relevance and data relationships
- Build and maintain high-throughput streaming data pipelines (e.g., Kafka) for real-time ingestion and indexing
- Contribute to architectural decisions that improve system scalability, reliability, and observability
- Participate in a shared on-call rotation to support service reliability and incident response with a focus on learning and prevention
- Collaborate with Product and Engineering to define technical requirements, timelines, and deliverables
- Apply modern engineering practices, including Agile methodologies, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps principles
- Review code, identify areas for improvement, and help reduce technical debt
- Troubleshoot and resolve production issues to maintain high availability and performance
- Stay current with emerging technologies in search, AI, and data systems, and evaluate their impact
- Deploy and manage applications in Kubernetes environments
- Monitor application health and performance using tools such as Splunk, Datadog, and Grafana
Our take
The emergence of new digital communication technologies provides businesses with a great opportunity for growth. But regulated businesses need to ensure they carry out communications monitoring, archiving, and compliance to stay on the right side of regulators. This can be difficult to do with new tech - to the extent that some businesses are hesitant to adopt it at all.
Of course, there’s a substantial appetite for ways to get around this obstacle and therefore reap the business benefits of modern comms. Smarsh provides just that, with its suite of archive, storage, and monitoring tools. In the two decades since its founding, the platform has netted over 6,500 clients including top worldwide banks, brokerage firms, insurers, registered investment advisors, and state and local government agencies in the US.
This puts Smarsh in a formidable position going forward. The issue the company addresses is only getting more acute as the volume of communications increases, more tech is brought to market, and the hybrid work model pushes more communications online. Smarsh’s extensive, top-tier global reach will help it field this growing market opportunity.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-9% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (2 rounds)
May 2015
$28m
LATE VC
Sep 2007
$15.6m
LATE VC
Total funding: $43.6m
Company benefits
- Healthcare insurance: We provide medical, dental and vision insurance and a flexible spending account that allows you to set aside pre-tax dollars to pay for eligible out-of-pocket expenses
- Personal time off: A healthy work-life balance is critical to your success at the office. Smarsh offers a "take-what-you-need" time off policy as well as flexible work arrangements
- Recognition: We're big on kudos for a job well done. Our employee recognition program enables co-workers to nominate their peers who best embody our core values for recognition
- Life and disability insurance: Fully paid life and disability insurance coverage is provided from the day you start your job
- Wellness program: You're happier when you're healthier. So we reimburse a portion of employees' monthly health club expenses
- Retirement savings: We match a percentage of your retirement savings contributions. Smarsh employer match invests immediately, so it's yours from day one
- Sabbatical: The Smarsh sabbatical program provides a time to recharge, study or simply a time to do something you are passionate about away from the workplace. Employees are eligible after six years of service
- Giving back: Through our community partnership program, Full Circle, employees make a positive difference and receive paid time off for Full Circle activities so they can support the organizations that matter most to them
- Employee assistance program: We offer free and confidential assessments, short-term counseling, referrals and follow-up services to employees for personal or work-related issues to support their mental and emotional well-being
- Cellphones: To support our mobile and geographically dispersed workforce, we offer corporate cellular plan discounts with both AT&T and T-Mobile
- Getting here and home: Biking and taking public transit to work is not only cool but a smart and green thing to do. Smarsh proudly reimburses for monthly transit costs and biking expenses
- Parental leave: We want to support our colleagues who are starting a family. Smarsh offers paid leave to help you welcome your new bundle(s) of joy into the world
Company HQ
Portland Downtown, Portland, OR
Leadership
Stephen Marsh
(Founder & Chairman)Previously worked on capital market systems at Fidelity Investments, and then moved to a Senior Product Manager role at CCBN. They are also a board member at The Wild, Asset Compliance Inc., and ComplySci.
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