Vannevar Labs builds next generation defense software for the public servants keeping our country safe. As a team, we exist because we believe in public service, and we think that our democracy and government improve only if we put serious, collective effort into improving them, including the technology our government uses.

This mission has become urgent. Ukraine is engaged in a war for survival with Russia. China regularly flies nuclear-capable bombers into Taiwan and Japan’s airspace. The US and our allies are fighting a war of deterrence with woefully outdated technology. We build software to support these missions, including providing battlefield information to allies, identifying malign activity, and helping the US deter and deescalate conflict.

We are a profitable growth startup with some of the best defense investors in the world, including General Catalyst, DFJ Growth, Point72, and enterprise tech investors Costanoa and Felicis.

Senior Search Engineer

Search is at the heart of Vannevar’s flagship product, Decrypt, and the number of business-critical use cases is growing as we expand into new products. We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer, with substantial knowledge and passion for search & information retrieval, to drive innovation in this space. In this role, you will work directly with our ML team to advance a state-of-the-art search system that fundamentally drives our users’ ability to surface mission critical information.

What You’ll Do

Help craft a technical strategy for search at Vannevar, including how we leverage full-text search, vector databases, LLMs, NLP, and relevance algorithms
Improve both search latency and relevance
Partner with other engineers, product managers, and designers to identify and quickly deliver customer value
Stay up to date with emerging technologies, trends, and best practices; particularly within the search/information retrieval domain

Qualifications

Proven experience in software development – you have worked on business-critical systems that are deployed in production environments
You’ve successfully led the design or architecture of new and existing system(s), ideally within the search/information-retrieval domain
You have proficiency and experience working with search technologies, such as Lucene, Elasticsearch, Vector Databases, NLP and LLMs
Strong leadership, teamwork, and communication skills
U.S. Person status is required as this position will require the ability to access U.S. only data systems

What we offer

The salary range for this position is $150,000 - $215,000 + equity + 401K match. Within the range, individual pay is determined by experience, relevant education, and/or training.

We’re proud to offer competitive benefits that support our employees. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:

Health, dental, and vision insurance
100% remote first culture. You can work from anywhere in the US and all full time employees have WeWork access
Unlimited PTO including competitive vacation and holiday schedules
Lifestyle stipends - Monthly mental health, wellness & fitness stipend, in-home office setup stipend and family planning assistance
Salary top-up during military reserve duty
Fully paid parental leave
Child and pet care reimbursement during travel

Vannevar Labs is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.

We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply, even if you dont feel like youre a perfect fit. If youre passionate about contributing to our mission, wed love to hear from you!

IMPORTANT NOTICE
We are committed to protecting the privacy of all applicants. Official emails from the company will come from an @vannevarlabs.com domain. Under no circumstances will a legitimate representative from our company contact you to request passwords, financial information, or other sensitive personal data. Please be vigilant of potential scams.