Senior Infrastructure Software Engineer, Search Platform

Role Description

As an Infrastructure Engineer, your role will be crucial in shaping and constructing the robust systems that not only support our current flagship products but also lay the groundwork for the next wave of engineering innovations. From optimizing user experiences across various projects to ensuring seamless scalability and data integrity, you'll be at the forefront of shaping the technological backbone of our platform.

Collaborating closely with cross-functional teams, you'll leverage your expertise to tackle audacious challenges and push the boundaries of what's possible. Your contributions will directly impact millions of users, as every line of code you write furthers our mission to revolutionize the way people work and collaborate. Join us in redefining the future, where your passion for building scalable, reliable systems will drive meaningful change on a global scale.

Our Engineering Career Framework is viewable by anyone outside the company and describes what’s expected for our engineers at each of our career levels. Check out our blog post on this topic and more here.

Responsibilities

• Build infrastructure capable of handling hundreds of petabytes of user data, and facilitating millions of concurrent connections.
• Develop a robust, highly scalable search platform to power Dropbox Dash - AI-powered search for work.
• Collaborate with product managers and stakeholders to understand business requirements and enable a wide range of search and retrieval capabilities
• Proactively identify new opportunities and drive improvements in current project states, advocating for and implementing changes that potentially impact broader business initiatives across teams or products.
• Stay current with emerging search and retrieval technologies and industry trends to continuously enhance Dropbox Dash’s search infrastructure and maintain a competitive edge in the market.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to innovate and implement search platform's capabilities to support Dropbox’s growing global user base, ensuring a consistent, high-quality experience worldwide.
• Proficiency in effectively navigating through ambiguous situations and uncertainties, demonstrating adaptability and strategic thinking to steer projects towards successful outcomes.
• Mentor and guide junior team members, sharing knowledge and best practices to cultivate a culture of continuous learning and professional growth within the infrastructure engineering team.

Many teams at Dropbox run Services with on-call rotations, which entails being available for calls during both core and non-core business hours. If a team has an on-call rotation, all engineers on the team are expected to participate in the rotation as part of their employment. Applicants are encouraged to ask for more details of the rotations to which the applicant is applying.

Requirements

• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or related technical field involving coding (e.g., physics or mathematics), or equivalent technical experience
• 8+ years of professional software development experience
• Proven track record constructing and managing expansive, multi-threaded, geographically dispersed backend systems
• Proficient in programming and debugging across a range of languages such as Python, Go, C/C++, or Java
• Extensive experience working with search platforms or related technologies
• Ability to navigate and thrive in ambiguous situations, showcasing adaptability and open-ended problem solving.
• Capable of taking ownership of long-term projects and seeing them through to completion.
• Ability to set medium-to-long term strategy for business-impacting projects.

Preferred Qualifications

• Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, working knowledge with LLM is a bonus
• Extensive experience working with search platforms or related technologies

Compensation