Senior Search Engineer

Are you looking

• To make meaningful changes at the fastest-growing tech company in Japan?
• For a fair, highly flexible, inclusive working environment where anyone, regardless of their background, can make an impact?
• To build the next bold idea in customer acquisition and revenue growth through conversational commerce technology
• For a place where things are not just fast - but they happen now? 

We Are Zeals - “Designing conversations. Driving conversions.”

Zeals is not another chatbot. Our automated chat solution and conversational technology change how consumers purchase or act online. Zeals converts customers who appear "unengaged" to become "valuable" through designed chat on Messaging Apps. Using AI-powered, human-designed conversation flows across chat platforms, Zeals enables brands to build personalized, automated conversations with their consumers and develop a deeper understanding of their preferences while creating a delightful, seamless shopping experience. Our last 3 years have been phenomenal. We have captured the heart of many businesses in Japan, with over 480 enterprises relying on our chat commerce offering to boost their mobile business.

The goal is simple: to “revolutionize hospitality on the Internet” by unlocking digital customer service experiences that were limited to physical stores previously. 

Just Getting Started…

With more than 480 enterprise companies worldwide already utilizing our product, we are perfectly poised to seize market share and fuel exponential growth in the US market, with an eye on global expansion. Investors have taken note of our potential, leading us to recently secure nearly $40 million in funding, backed by Salesforce Ventures.

As our Senior Search Engineer

As a Senior Search Engineer, you will be an integral part of our engineering team, focused on building and optimising search solutions that power our conversational commerce platform. You will design and implement search algorithms that improve the relevance, accuracy, and speed of our chat interactions, ensuring that users get the best possible experience. You will collaborate closely with product, data science, and engineering teams to build scalable, efficient search systems that handle massive volumes of data while delivering lightning-fast results. We’re looking for someone with at least 5 years of experience in search technology.

Your Typical Day With Us

• Designing and developing search algorithms and infrastructure to enhance the relevance and speed of search results.
• Optimising search models and tuning relevance metrics to meet business requirements.
• Building and maintaining indexing, ranking, and query processing systems.
• Collaborating with product and data science teams to integrate AI models and machine learning into search workflows.
• Monitoring and optimising the performance of search engines across various use cases and data sets.
• Ensuring data quality and relevance through the implementation of ranking systems and continuous testing.
• Conducting code reviews and mentoring junior engineers.
• Troubleshooting and resolving search-related issues to maintain system performance and availability.

What You’ll Need

• 5+ years of experience as a search engineer or in a related role.
• Deep understanding of search engines, information retrieval, and ranking algorithms.
• Strong proficiency with search technologies such as Elasticsearch, Solr, or Lucene.
• Experience with Python and/or Java for building scalable backend systems.
• Solid understanding of query parsing, indexing, and relevance tuning.
• Familiarity with AI-powered search enhancements such as machine learning and natural language processing.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across teams.
• Ability to work independently and manage multiple projects simultaneously.
• English proficiency is a must. Conversational Japanese is nice to have.

What Makes You Stand Out

• Japanese language proficiency at a business or native level, allowing you to liaise with our primarily Japan-based users.
• Knowledge of cultural differences and how they impact user behavior in search contexts.
• Experience working with chatbot search systems, AI-driven search, or in SaaS environments.

Don’t just take our word for it 

Zeals has received the LinkedIn Top Startups award twice in a row. We believe this is a testament to our growth and our ability to attract great talents–who could potentially be your colleague! 

Ready to roll up our sleeves

We obsess over bringing hospitality to everyone–be it our customers or you! You’re an individual with unique needs. So, While we can’t attract you with ping-pong tables or all-you-can-drink espresso bars, we promise you a once-in-a-lifetime experience and co-workers that you can brag about to your friends, family, or anyone you meet the next time you go out for a party! . As an employer we are ready to roll-up our sleeves and change the status quo if it means to make your experience better!

• Salary Range : competitive (performance review every 6 months)
• Performance review: twice a year
• Holidays: 10 days paid holidays during the first year, weekends off, national holidays, summer and winter break. 
• Visa support: We sponsor visas for the right candidates. You can expect full visa support from our professional HR team. 
• Flexible working: Highly flexible, remote-first international organization 
• For Japanese residence: Work from anywhere, interim work from overseas, full flex time
• Housing allowance (within 1.5KM away from office)
• Club activity allowance
• Shuffle Lunch allowance (Cross department lunch) 
• Zeals Bar (bi-monthly free flow beer party)