Search Engineer Jobs in Michigan (NOW HIRING)

Overview of the Role:
Advanced Content Engineering (ACE) is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the design and delivery of the search platform's control-plane API and cloud infrastructure. The platform's core promise is self-service: internal client teams must be able to create a search system, configure an ingestion topology, promote a new index to production, and monitor system health - entirely through APIs - without requiring direct involvement from the platform team. Building, operating, and continuously improving that self-service experience is the heart of this role.
This is a high-ownership, high-leverage position at the intersection of platform engineering, API design, and cloud infrastructure. Staff Engineers on this team define, build, test, deploy, scale, and operate what they ship - full-stack ownership is the baseline, not a bonus. Delivery friction is treated as an urgent engineering problem: the team ships to production constantly, AI-assisted development is the norm, and removing obstacles to fast, safe delivery is everyone's responsibility. The successful candidate brings enterprise-grade security instincts, deep AWS expertise, and a product-minded approach to developer experience - treating the platform's API as a product in its own right.

About the Role
In this position, you will focus on:
Platform Control-Plane API
Plan, design, develop, and own the platform's management API - the self-service interface through which client teams create and configure search systems, manage ingestion topologies, register reusable components, promote index versions, and monitor system health - resolving problems of diverse scope with innovative thinking and little or no precedent to guide solutions
Architect the platform's multi-tenant access model: implement strict data isolation between client tenants, integrate with enterprise identity providers, establish role-based access control across all API endpoints, and define the governance framework that ensures the platform can make credible security commitments to enterprise customers
Establish API strategy and cross-system integration patterns - designing versioned, backward-compatible interfaces with clear contracts, comprehensive documentation, and developer-experience patterns drawn from best-in-class
search platform providers - and set governance standards that the team follows for all future API surface
Design and expose the API surface required to support the platform's evaluation and experimentation workflows - including endpoints that enable the search grading tool to consume experiment run outputs, query/result pairs, and relevance judgments, and that allow client teams to configure and trigger A/B search experiments through self-service interfaces
Design the configuration data model and persistence layer (DynamoDB and related services) that stores search system definitions, component registry entries, index lifecycle state, and audit logs - applying architectural patterns that scale to the platform's multi-tenant and multi-region ambitions
Break down complex business requirements into functional and technical requirements with consideration for security, ethical AI implementation, and operational efficiency; contribute to recommendations where technology transformation can spark business growth

Cloud Infrastructure & DevOps
Own the platform's AWS infrastructure as code - defining, provisioning, and maintaining ECS services, MSK clusters, OpenSearch/Vespa deployments, DynamoDB tables, networking (VPC, security groups, NAT), and IAM roles using Terraform or AWS CDK - establishing infrastructure governance standards and a cloud strategy for multi-environment and eventual multi-region operation
Design and own the CI/CD pipeline for platform services - establishing DevOps culture and toolchain strategy for the team, with a clear mandate to eliminate delivery friction: the team ships to production constantly, and any obstacle to doing so safely is an engineering problem to be solved, not a process to be accepted
Drive adoption of AI-assisted development practices across the team's infrastructure and API work - establishing the tooling, patterns, and norms that enable engineers to leverage AI to move faster while maintaining the quality and reliability bar the platform demands
Own infrastructure cost management: monitor AWS spend across platform components, evaluate architectural trade-offs at the system level, and implement an enterprise performance and optimization framework that keeps the platform's economics sustainable as it scales - including compute cost governance for inference workloads as custom model serving is introduced
Implement and operate customer-controlled encryption key (CMK) support - applying security strategy, risk assessment frameworks, and security governance to give enterprise clients control over their encryption keys while preserving multi-tenant reliability

Reliability Engineering
Define and own platform-level SLOs covering API availability, query latency, ingestion throughput, and end-to-end document freshness - and build the
monitoring infrastructure (CloudWatch, distributed tracing, alerting) that makes SLO compliance continuously visible to the team and to client teams
Design the observability infrastructure for agentic retrieval paths - where standard request/response logging is insufficient: implement trace-level instrumentation that captures tool invocation sequences, per-hop latency, and retrieval inputs, enabling reliable diagnosis of failures and quality regressions in non-deterministic agent workflows
Take full operational responsibility for platform API and infrastructure - you built it, you own it, you run it: triage and resolve incidents, write thorough post-mortems, and drive systematic improvements that prevent recurrence
Design enterprise performance strategy for the platform's API layer: load testing, capacity planning, performance profiling, and system-level optimization - ensuring the platform can handle planned growth in tenants, content volumes, and query traffic
Embed security architecture throughout the platform's infrastructure: least-privilege IAM, secrets management, encryption at rest and in transit, audit logging, and compliance implementation aligned with TR's enterprise security requirements

Technical Leadership
Establish architectural principles and cross-system design patterns for the platform's control plane and infrastructure - functioning as the technical authority that other engineers and teams turn to for API and infrastructure guidance
Lead significant projects and business initiatives that span multiple engineers and interact with partner teams; determine work priorities and make adjustments to short-term priorities while maintaining strategic focus; provide specialist advice to senior management on complex infrastructure and security issues
Mentor and develop Senior and mid-level engineers - providing coaching, technical direction, and educational opportunities in cloud infrastructure, platform API design, reliability engineering, and AI-assisted development practices
Engage with client teams as a technical partner - understanding their integration experience and pain points, feeding structured requirements back into the platform API roadmap, and proactively reducing time-to-value for new platform adopters
Deliver effective presentations on complex infrastructure and security concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders; champion ethical AI practices and responsible technology deployment across the team's work

About You
You're an ideal fit if you have:
Required Experience -
Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
8+ years of software engineering experience, with demonstrated progression to staff-level or equivalent technical leadership - including ownership of a functional area and leadership of significant cross-functional projects
Deep expertise in cloud-native platform and infrastructure engineering on AWS: VPC architecture, IAM, ECS, Lambda, DynamoDB, MSK, and related managed services - with hands-on infrastructure-as-code experience (Terraform and/or AWS CDK) and the ability to establish infrastructure governance frameworks
Production experience with OpenSearch, Vespa, or Elasticsearch at an operational level - cluster sizing, backup and restore, index lifecycle management, and multi-tenant access controls
Mastery of Python with strategic awareness of language selection and migration; strong software engineering fundamentals including testing architecture, security architecture, and system design
Demonstrated enterprise security practice: security strategy, risk assessment frameworks, least-privilege IAM, secrets management, encryption at rest and in transit, and compliance implementation in production cloud environments
Track record of establishing API governance frameworks, cross-system integration patterns, and documentation standards; experience designing multi-tenant SaaS-style platform APIs with versioning, access control, and first-class developer experience
Demonstrated reliability engineering ownership: SLO definition, observability implementation, on-call leadership, and a track record of improving platform reliability through data-driven retrospectives - with a clear philosophy that shipping frequently and operating reliably are complementary, not in tension
Comfort and fluency with AI-assisted development tools; you use them to move faster and produce higher-quality infrastructure and API code, and you actively help the team do the same

Preferred Experience -
Experience operating Kafka (MSK) or other distributed messaging infrastructure in production, including partition management, consumer group monitoring, and schema registry governance
Background in Kubernetes or ECS container orchestration, including service mesh, autoscaling, and health check patterns
Experience building developer-facing internal platforms where API quality and documentation are treated as first-class product concerns
Knowledge of enterprise encryption patterns, including customer-managed keys (AWS KMS) and their architectural implications for multi-tenant systems
Familiarity with distributed tracing infrastructure for non-deterministic or agentic workflows - where trace design must capture tool call sequences and per-hop context, not just request/response pairs
Familiarity with AI service architecture: evaluating AI vendors, cost-benefit analysis, and integrating AI API services with fallback strategies into production platform infrastructure.

What Success Looks Like
In the first 90 days:
Build a thorough understanding of the platform's current infrastructure, API surface, and operational posture - including known gaps in reliability, security, and developer experience
Establish relationships with key client teams to understand their integration experience and pain points with the current platform
Take on-call ownership for your functional area and identify and begin delivering the highest-leverage near-term improvements to platform API or infrastructure reliability

In the first year:
Deliver a materially improved self-service platform API - with strong multi-tenant isolation, documented governance standards, and measurably better developer experience for client teams
Establish end-to-end SLO coverage across platform services, with automated alerting, clear on-call runbooks, documented architectural decision records, and a track record of fast, high-quality incident resolution
Own and deliver a major infrastructure initiative - CMK support, multi-environment maturity, agentic observability infrastructure, or a comparable project - from architectural design through production, establishing the principles and patterns that guide the platform's infrastructure evolution
Become the recognized technical authority for platform API and infrastructure - shaping team standards, influencing platform architecture, and providing specialist guidance to leadership on complex infrastructure and security challenges.

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What's in it For You?

• Hybrid Work Model: We've adopted a flexible hybrid working environment (2-3 days a week in the office depending on the role) for our office-based roles while delivering a seamless experience that is digitally and physically connected.

• Flexibility & Work-Life Balance: Flex My Way is a set of supportive workplace policies designed to help manage personal and professional responsibilities, whether caring for family, giving back to the community, or finding time to refresh and reset. This builds upon our flexible work arrangements, including work from anywhere for up to 8 weeks per year, empowering employees to achieve a better work-life balance.

• Career Development and Growth: By fostering a culture of continuous learning and skill development, we prepare our talent to tackle tomorrow's challenges and deliver real-world solutions. Our Grow My Way programming and skills-first approach ensures you have the tools and knowledge to grow, lead, and thrive in an AI-enabled future.

• Industry Competitive Benefits: We offer comprehensive benefit plans to include flexible vacation, two company-wide Mental Health Days off, access to the Headspace app, retirement savings, tuition reimbursement, employee incentive programs, and resources for mental, physical, and financial wellbeing.

• Culture: Globally recognized, award-winning reputation for inclusion and belonging, flexibility, work-life balance, and more. We live by our values: Obsess over our Customers, Compete to Win, Challenge (Y)our Thinking, Act Fast / Learn Fast, and Stronger Together.

• Social Impact: Make an impact in your community with our Social Impact Institute. We offer employees two paid volunteer days off annually and opportunities to get involved with pro-bono consulting projects and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives.

• Making a Real-World Impact:We are one of the few companies globally that helps its customers pursue justice, truth, and transparency. Together, with the professionals and institutions we serve, we help uphold the rule of law, turn the wheels of commerce, catch bad actors, report the facts, an...