Engineering Manager - Search
Posted on:
April 24, 2025
Job description
Dovetail is the world's leading AI-first customer insights hub, on a mission to improve the quality of every thing. We're redefining what it means to be connected to your customer, giving everyone on the product team fast and easy access to customer insights at any point in the development lifecycle.
Founded in 2017, Dovetail's team is 100+ and growing across our offices in Sydney and San Francisco. We're seeking ambitious problem solvers from a diverse range of backgrounds, who are desired for their experience, passionate about their craft, and excited about the work we're undertaking. If this sounds like you, read on…
We're looking for an Engineering Manager to lead our Ask team, focusing on building and scaling our world-class conversational search and insights generation features. You'll lead a team of talented engineers, including Principal-level talent, who are solving complex search challenges while providing simplicity to our customers.
We're all about sweating the details on delightful experiences, tackling ambitious technical challenges head-on, and constantly delivering customer value. As an Engineering Manager, you will cultivate high-performing teams that execute on our search vision, develop technical leaders, and partner with product leadership to align our search technology roadmap with business objectives.
Responsibilities
What you’ll do
- Build and lead high-performing search engineering teams. You'll hire, develop, and retain exceptional search talent. You create an environment where engineers feel empowered, motivated, and supported to build world-class search and AI capabilities. You balance technical leadership with people management, ensuring your team has the right mix of guidance and autonomy.
- Drive strategic technical decisions. Working closely with Principal Engineers and Technical Leadership, you'll help shape Dovetail's vision for search and insights extraction. You understand the technical complexities of modern search architectures and can guide your team in making sound implementation decisions that align with our long-term strategy.
- Manage the development and delivery of complex search features. You'll oversee the design, implementation, and operation of scalable search systems, including indexing pipelines, query understanding, and relevance optimization. You ensure on-time delivery while maintaining the highest standards of quality.
- Foster a culture of technical excellence. You set high standards for search quality, performance, and reliability. You help your team navigate technical tradeoffs, prioritize effectively, and implement best practices for search development, testing, and operations.
- Bridge technical and business perspectives. You'll translate business requirements into technical solutions, while also helping stakeholders understand technical constraints and opportunities in the search domain. You'll partner with product leadership to prioritize search initiatives that deliver maximum customer value.
Job requirements
Your background
- Strong technical background in search and information retrieval. You have hands-on experience with search technologies like Elasticsearch, Solr, or vector databases. You understand the fundamentals of search architecture, relevance tuning, and performance optimization. Experience with AI-augmented search is highly valuable.
- Proven engineering management experience.You've successfully led and grown engineering teams, preferably in domains involving search, ML, or complex data systems. You have experience attracting, hiring, and developing technical talent.
- Technical leadership capabilities. You can evaluate complex technical proposals, identify risks, and guide teams toward sound architectural decisions. You can effectively balance high-level strategic thinking with detailed technical understanding.
- Outstanding communication skills. You articulate complex technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences. You facilitate productive discussions between engineers, product managers, and other stakeholders. You're adept at managing upward, downward, and across the organization.
- Delivery excellence. You have a track record of successfully delivering complex technical projects on time and with high quality. You're skilled at breaking down large initiatives, identifying dependencies, and mitigating risks.
- Coaching and mentorship abilities. You excel at developing technical leaders and helping engineers grow. You create opportunities for your team members to stretch their abilities and take on new challenges.
- Pragmatic and flexible approach. Like your new teammates, you're used to doing what's necessary to get the job done. You're comfortable with ambiguity, resourceful in solving problems, and able to adjust to changing customer needs.
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