Software Engineer, Search Quality and Ranking

Notion helps you build beautiful tools for your life’s work. In today's world of endless apps and tabs, Notion provides one place for teams to get everything done, seamlessly connecting docs, notes, projects, calendar, and email—with AI built in to find answers and automate work. Millions of users, from individuals to large organizations like Toyota, Figma, and OpenAI, love Notion for its flexibility and choose it because it helps them save time and money.
In-person collaboration is essential to Notion's culture. We require all team members to work from our offices on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, our designated Anchor Days. Certain teams or positions may require additional in-office workdays.

We are looking for a engineer to join our small but nimble Search team whose mission is to find the best documents users (or AI tools!) are looking for, as quickly as possible. As a Search Engineer, you will work on using state-of-the-art models to improve Notion search ranking. You’ll be exploring the boundaries of what’s possible with the latest and greatest Search technologies and finding innovative ways to apply new industry learnings to Notion.

• You'll build and maintain our core search APIs, used heavily by internal teams, external users, and agents

• You will build new ranking models that bring meaningful quality improvements while keeping latency low (we care a lot about latency here!)

• You'll build out our core ML infra (we use Anyscale / Dynamo)

• You'll improve ranking across all sorts of different recall sources, like Elasticsearch and vector databases

• You have experience in a technically challenging domain (latency sensitive systems; recommender systems; etc) and are energized by learning new technologies.

• Holistic Problem Solver: You approach problems holistically, starting with a clear and accurate understanding of the context. You think critically about the implications of what you're building and how it will impact real people's lives. You can navigate ambiguity flawlessly and decompose complex problems into clean solutions.

• Communicate with Care: You communicate nuanced ideas clearly, whether you're explaining technical decisions in writing or brainstorming in real time. In disagreements, you engage thoughtfully with other perspectives and compromise when needed. You are a lifelong learner and invest in both your own growth and the growth, learning, and development of your teammates.

• Impact Driven: You care about business impact and prioritize projects accordingly. You understand the balance between craft, speed, and the bottom line. You understand that reach comes with responsibility for our impact—good and bad. Work isn't a solo endeavor for you, and you enjoy collaborating cross-functionally to accomplish shared goals.

• You don’t need to be an AI expert, but you’re curious and willing to adopt AI tools to work smarter and deliver better results.

• 3+ years of experience in one or more of the following areas: machine learning, recommendation or ranking systems, natural language understanding/generation or artificial intelligence.

• Experience building products using LLMs, embeddings or other ML natural language technologies.

• You understand how parts of a system fit together, from the user interface to the data model. You are familiar with relational database systems like Postgres or MySQL, and have experience building products from ground up.

• Elasticsearch experience in knowledge-search domains

• You’re proficient with data pipeline technologies: Spark, DBT, etc.

• You're proficient with any part of our technology stack: React, TypeScript, Node.js, and Postgres.

• You have experience driving teams toward shared goals and can balance business priorities with individuals’ strengths, areas of interest, and career development goals.

• You've heard of computing pioneers like Ada Lovelace, Douglas Engelbart, Alan Kay, and others—and understand why we're big fans of their work.

We hire talented and passionate people from a variety of backgrounds because we want our global employee base to represent the wide diversity of our customers. If you’re excited about a role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every bullet point listed in the job description, we still encourage you to apply. If you’re a builder at heart, share our company values, and enthusiastic about making software toolmaking ubiquitous, we want to hear from you.

Notion is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Notion considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Notion is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation made due to a disability, please let your recruiter know.

Notion is committed to providing highly competitive cash compensation, equity, and benefits. The compensation offered for this role will be based on multiple factors such as location, the role’s scope and complexity, and the candidate’s experience and expertise, and may vary from the range provided below. For roles based in San Francisco and New York, the estimated base salary range for this role is $160,000-$220,000 per year.

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