Software Engineer (Search & AI focus)

Who are we?
At Leadership Connect, we believe that relationships are everything in business and in life. Founded by two former CEOs of S&P 500 companies and a former presidential press secretary, our premier information service is built for developing relationships that impact decisions in government, business, and media. Utilizing deep research expertise and cutting-edge technology, we help our clients win business and influence policy across various specialties and verticals. We are a close-knit team dedicated to helping each of our users make a difference.

Leadership Connect Canada (LCC), a subsidiary of Leadership Connect Inc., is our Canadian entity operating in the Quebec province. This opportunity requires an applicant to live and work within the Quebec province.

About the Role
We are seeking a software engineer to make a major contribution to the development of our next-generation applications. In this role, you will help build a new semantic search and retrieval capability and integrate it into our production backend. You’ll work end-to-end across components like indexing, retrieval/ranking, relevance iteration, and evaluation, collaborating closely with a small team to ship customer-facing improvements.

Core Functions of the Role: :
• Design, build, and maintain backend services and APIs that power customer-facing applications.
• Build and productionize search/retrieval capabilities (indexing, retrieval, ranking/relevance, evaluation).
• Collaborate across engineering and product to define requirements, iterate quickly, and deliver reliable releases.
• Participate in planning, design, development, testing, and deployment using Agile practices.
• Propose pragmatic solutions and improvements that directly influence product direction.

Required Qualifications:
• 3–7 years of professional software engineering experience building backend or data-heavy systems.
• Strong backend fundamentals: API design, testing, debugging, performance, and operational thinking.
• Production experience in Python and at least one of Kotlin/Java (Kotlin preferred).
• Experience with a modern backend framework (e.g., Spring or equivalent) or demonstrated ability to ramp quickly in one.
• Search/retrieval experience is required: you’ve built or substantially contributed to a search/retrieval system (indexing pipelines, relevance tuning, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, semantic retrieval, ranking, query parsing/understanding, etc.).
• Solid understanding of relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred), data modeling, and query patterns.
• Comfortable working in a small team with high ownership and ambiguous problems.

Preferred Qualifications: :
• Experience with Elasticsearch/OpenSearch in production (index design, analyzers, query tuning, performance, relevance).
• Experience with embeddings or vector search and relevance iteration/evaluation.
• Experience integrating LLMs into production applications.
• Familiarity with approaches like hybrid search and ranking signals.
• Go experience (or interest in learning).
• AWS + containerized deployment experience (Docker, ECS, CI/CD).
• Understanding of microservices and cross-service communication.

What Is It Like to Work Here?
We foster an environment that encourages all our team members to excel by offering competitive compensation for top talent. We believe in creating a friendly and enjoyable workplace, with regular team-building events, happy hours, and more. Transparency is key within our company, and we hold monthly town halls led by our CEO to address questions regarding business plans, product direction, and company goals. In addition, we provide flexible PTO policies to ensure you can enjoy your time outside the office and focus on your personal life.

Are you ready to join our dynamic team and build meaningful relationships that make a difference? Apply today!

Benefits/Rewards:
Awesome Extended Health Care Plan
Dental Care
Life & Disability insurance
Health spending accounts
Unlimited PTO!
12 Paid Holidays
$3,000 Employee Referral Program
Employer contribution to VRSP
Rewards and recognition programs

If you’re excited about this role but don’t meet 100% of the requirements, we still want to hear from you!
Leadership Connect is committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce where unique experiences are valued and everyone has the opportunity to contribute. Research has continuously shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply for jobs unless they meet all of the listed qualifications. We want to help overcome this trend and seek to make space for unique and relevant skills and attributes. So, when applying to Leadership Connect we focus on evaluation based on key competencies needed for success in the position. We look forward to receiving your application!

Leadership Connect is committed to creating a diverse environment and is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.