Staff Software Engineer, Search

Zocdoc

Staff Software Engineer developing backend services and APIs for Zocdoc’s intelligent search platform. Key role in architecting systems to enhance patient care accessibility.

Posted 5/19/2026full-timeRemote • New York • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $211,100 - $285,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCloudDistributed SystemsDynamoDB.NET

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

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.

Requirements

What you’ll need

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 technologies, vector databases, embedding models, and ML model serving, with a strong understanding of how to operate these at production scale.
Strong communication skills that align engineering, product, data science, and infrastructure stakeholders around shared goals.
A passion for mentoring engineers, setting engineering best practices, and raising the overall technical quality bar.
Experience designing systems for high availability, fault tolerance, and graceful degradation in latency-sensitive environments.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Unlimited Vacation
100% paid employee health benefit options (including medical, dental, and vision)
Commuter Benefits
401(k) with employer funded match
Corporate wellness programs with Headspace and Peloton
Sabbatical leave (for employees with 5+ years of service)
Competitive paid parental leave and fertility/family planning reimbursement
Cell phone reimbursement
Catered lunch everyday along with beverages and snacks
Employee Resource Groups and ZocClubs to promote shared community and belonging
Great Place to Work Certified

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Hard Skills & Tools

C#.NETdistributed systems designperformance optimizationservice-oriented architecturedata pipelinesingestion systemsstream-processing workflowssearch technologiesML model serving

Soft Skills

communication skillsmentoringtechnical decision-makingcollaborationsetting engineering standards