Senior Java Engineer with Solr/OpenSearch

We are looking for an experienced Senior Java Engineer who goes beyond standard CRUD APIs and lives in the world of information retrieval.

Our customer is a Fortune 500 company. As a leading business-to-business organization, more than 3.2 million customers rely on its products in categories such as safety, material handling, and metalworking, along with services like inventory management and technical support. ​

In this role, you will act as the bridge between our core Java application architecture and our specialized search infrastructure. You will be responsible for the entire search lifecycle: from designing how data is ingested and indexed, to building the Java APIs that query that data, and crucially, tuning the relevancy algorithms that ensure our users find exactly what they are looking for, instantly. The ideal candidate has deep roots in the Apache Solr ecosystem but is also ready to embrace modern cloud-native search via AWS OpenSearch. Whether you are maintaining critical legacy Solr clusters or architecting new solutions on AWS, your goal is to make data findable, fast, and relevant.

Technology stack: Java/Spring Boot, Apache Solr (Legacy/Core), AWS OpenSearch (Modern/Growth), SQL DB, Kafka

Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, and maintain high-performance backend Java services (primarily Spring Boot) that integrate with search engines.

• Build complex search features for the frontend, including faceted navigation (filtering), multi-tenant searching, real-time autocomplete/typeahead, and spell-checking suggestions.

• Utilize Java client libraries (such as SolrJ or AWS SDKs) to construct efficient, programmatic queries.

• Take ownership of the search schema design, deciding how complex data structures should be analyzed, tokenized, and stored for optimal retrieval.

• Build robust ETL pipelines in Java (potentially using Kafka or other messaging systems) to synchronize data from primary SQL databases into the search indices in near real-time.

• Configure analyzers, stemmers, and tokenizers to handle nuances in human language.

• Diagnose slow queries, analyze search logs, and optimize both Java application code and search engine configurations for low-latency performance.

• Maintain and optimize existing on-premise or cloud-hosted Apache Solr installations.

• Play a key role in designing hybrid strategies or migration paths from legacy Solr systems to managed AWS OpenSearch environments.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of professional experience in backend software development using modern Java (Java 8+, Spring Boot ecosystem).

• Strong, demonstrable experience with Search Technologies. This means either:

• Hands-on production experience configuring, managing, and developing against Apache Solr (understanding schema.xml, solrconfig.xml, Zookeeper integration).

• OR deep foundational knowledge of Lucene-based search concepts (inverted indices, analysis chains, TF-IDF/BM25 scoring logic) with the ability to quickly apply that to Solr.

• Hands-on experience with AWS OpenSearch (or Elasticsearch) in a managed cloud environment.

• Experience with data modeling in relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle).

• Strong understanding of RESTful API design principles.

• Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience architecting zero-downtime migrations from self-hosted Solr to managed cloud search services.

• Experience with event-driven architecture and streaming tools like Apache Kafka for real-time indexing.

• Familiarity with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CD pipelines like Jenkins or GitLab CI.

We offer*:

• Flexible working format - remote, office-based or flexible

• A competitive salary and good compensation package

• Personalized career growth

• Professional development tools (mentorship program, tech talks and trainings, centers of excellence, and more)

• Active tech communities with regular knowledge sharing

• Education reimbursement

• Memorable anniversary presents

• Corporate events and team buildings

• Other location-specific benefits

*not applicable for freelancers