Engineering Manager - Search / ML / NLP / ElasticSearch

Engineering Manager - Search / ML / NLP / ElasticSearch

Remote - UK, US or German locations preferred.

About the role

I am supporting a global online marketplace business who are investing heavily in building a best-in-class search experience. They operate across multiple platforms, reaching millions of users worldwide, and search sits right at the heart of their product.

I am looking for an Engineering Manager with strong technical depth in search technologies, particularly Elasticsearch, to lead a team of engineers and drive the architecture and performance of their search platform. This role combines hands-on technical leadership with people management, helping shape the future of search relevance, ranking, and personalisation at scale.

What youll be doing

Lead and grow a team of engineers working on core search systems.

Drive architecture and technical strategy for search relevance, ranking and retrieval.

Partner with Product, Data and AI teams to define and deliver the search roadmap.

Oversee migration and optimisation projects on Elasticsearch and the wider search stack.

Troubleshoot and diagnose complex search issues (e.g. ingestion pipelines, ranking signals).

Foster engineering excellence, mentoring team members and embedding best practices.

What were looking for

Experience as an Engineering Manager, Tech Lead, or similar role leading cross-functional teams.

Deep expertise with Elasticsearch (tuning, scaling, migrations, relevance optimisation. Migration experience preferred).

Strong background in ML, NLP, search, information retrieval or related fields (ranking models, vector databases & personalisation).

A mix of strategic vision and hands-on capability able to guide architecture while rolling up sleeves when needed.

Experience collaborating with Product, ML and Analytics teams.

Excellent communication skills and ability to translate technical work into business impact.

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