Staff Software Engineer, Search

Our MissionHealthcare should work for patients, but it doesn’t. In their time of need, they call down outdated insurance directories. Then wait on hold. Then wait weeks for the privilege of a visit. Then wait in a room solely designed for waiting. Then wait for a surprise bill. In any other consumer industry, the companies delivering such a poor customer experience would not survive. But in healthcare, patients lack market power. Which means they are expected to accept the unacceptable.Zocdoc’s mission is to give power to the patient. To do that, we’ve built the leading healthcare marketplace that makes it easy to find and book in-person or virtual care in all 50 states, across +200 specialties and +12k insurance plans. By giving patients the ability to see and choose, we give them power. In doing so, we can make healthcare work like every other consumer sector, where businesses compete for customers, not the other way around. In time, this will drive quality up and prices down. We’re 18 years old and the leader in our space, but we are still just getting started. If you like solving important, complex problems alongside deeply thoughtful, driven, and collaborative teammates, read on.*Please note, we are open to remote candidates for this role.Your Impact on our MissionAs a Staff Software Engineer on Zocdoc’s Search Services team, you will play a critical role in evolving one of the most important experiences we deliver to patients: helping them intuitively find and access the care that’s right for them. Our mission for 2026 and beyond is ambitious—we are transforming Zocdoc’s search function to an intelligent, intent-driven experience using embeddings, LLMs, and modern ranking models. This evolution requires rethinking our search architecture from the ground up, and delivering personalized, agentic flows that guide patients to care with unprecedented clarity and ease.You will lead the design and development of the high-performance backend services, APIs, and data infrastructure that make this vision possible. From our tier-1 search service and vector search systems to cross-encoder ranking pipelines, your work will power the intelligence behind Zocdoc Search. You’ll set the technical bar for backend engineering excellence while shaping the strategy of Zocdoc Search—helping unlock a new generation of intelligent, scalable, and patient-centered search infrastructure. You’ll enjoy this role if you arePassionate about building sophisticated backend systems — distributed services, data pipelines, and APIs that need to operate at scale with low latency and high reliability.Excited to architect the infrastructure powering intelligent search — from vector retrieval and cross-encoder reranking to real-time ingestion and indexing.Motivated by the challenge of integrating ML model serving, embeddings, and LLM-driven flows into production backend systems that serve millions of patients.A technical leader who thrives on architecting systems, mentoring engineers, and elevating code quality and team-wide execution An excellent communicator who collaborates effectively with product, data science, and infrastructure partners.Energized by solving ambiguous infrastructure and architectural challenges to deliver elegant, robust solutions.Your day to day is…Architecting and building core backend services, APIs, and data infrastructure that power Zocdoc’s next-generation search platform.redesigning how provider, availability, and content data is ingested and flows through indexing pipelines into search and ML systems.Designing and optimizing low-latency query paths across our tier-1 search service, vector search infrastructure, and cross-encoder ranking systems.Integrating ML model serving, embedding generation, and ranking signals into production backend services through scalable, observable patterns.Driving architectural direction and setting engineering standards across the Search Services organization through design docs, technical deep dives, and high-signal code reviews.Mentoring engineers on backend best practices, distributed systems design, API architecture, and technical decision-making.Building robust observability into backend services—measuring, debugging, and improving performance, reliability, and data freshness across the entire search stack.You’ll be successful in this role if you have…A proven track record of owning and scaling complex, high-traffic backend platforms, with deep expertise in distributed systems design and long-term architectural thinking.Deep hands-on expertise with C# / .NET or comparable backend frameworks, with a focus on performance optimization, concurrency, and service-oriented architecture.Significant experience designing and operating large-scale data pipelines, ingestion systems, or stream-processing workflows. Strong experience with AWS services and cloud-native infrastructure patterns — ECS, Lambda, DynamoDB, SQS/SNS, Kinesis, OpenSearch, S3, and similar.Familiarity with search techn