Senior Staff Software Engineer, Search (San Francisco)

About the TeamWe are on a mission to build a reliable, fast, and scalable search for DoorDash. As a product, we help millions of customers find the stores, items, and experiences they want. As a platform, we provide indexing, retrieval, ranking, and query understanding capabilities to internal customer teams across more than 20 verticals. Our work spans three dimensions: scale (over a billion indexed documents, thousands of QPS, expensive operations on millions of documents per second), product (improving search experience for DoorDash customers and enabling product teams across many surfaces to experiment with minimal friction using search infrastructure), and quality (query understanding, multi-stage ranking, and semantic search capabilities to improve search relevance and drive conversion).This is a pivotal moment for Search. We are evolving the platform to support the next generation of consumer experiences, from semantic search to agentic commerce experiences powered by LLM. The architectural decisions we make now will define how DoorDash discovery works for the next decade.About the RoleAs a Senior Staff Engineer on Search, you will serve as the tech lead for the Search organization, driving the technical strategy and architectural direction for the entire search stack. You will own the multi-year technical roadmap spanning indexing, serving, and the backend systems that power search and agentic commerce experiences at DoorDash. This is an individual contributor role with org-wide technical authority.You will partner closely with Machine Learning, Product, and Infrastructure stakeholders to chart the roadmap, scale foundational systems, and deliver high-impact outcomes that improve discovery, conversion, and customer experience.You're excited about this opportunity because you will…Lead at scale: Serve as the uber tech lead for Search, providing technical vision and architectural direction across the entire organization. Own a multi-year roadmap that spans multiple services and teams powering mission-critical products at DoorDash.Architect the next-generation search stack: Drive the rebuild of core search infrastructure, including indexing pipelines, embedding-based retrieval, and ML ranker serving in latency-sensitive paths. This stack will power both consumer search and agentic commerce experiences at DoorDash scale.Influence across teams: Drive alignment across ML, Infrastructure, Product, and partner engineering teams. Mentor staff and senior engineers across the search org to raise the bar of technical excellence.Shape engineering culture: Set the technical bar for how the search org designs, ships, and operates large-scale systems, and define the patterns that will outlast any single project.Hands-on problem solving: Dig into complex distributed systems challenges, from low-latency serving to indexing freshness tradeoffs, and write code that moves the needle.We're excited about you because you have… B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science or equivalent.10+ years of industry experience, with a track record of leading large-scale, high-impact components and systems.Proficiency in using AI coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) in the full software development lifecycle, including designing, generating code, testing, monitoring and releasing softwareProven ability to drive multi-quarter technical roadmaps as a technical lead, with clear ownership of architectural decisions.Deep expertise in distributed systems and data pipelines at scale. Expertise in search infrastructure, including indexing and serving stack.Strong understanding of ML systems, embedding-based retrieval, model serving tradeoffs, and multi-stage ranking architectures.Strong technical intuition paired with the ability to influence and align cross-functional stakeholders.Humility and growth mindset, leading through expertise and collaboration, not hierarchy.CompensationThe successful candidate’s starting pay will fall within the pay range listed below and is determined based on job-related factors including, but not limited to, skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. Base salary is localized according to an employee’s work location. Ranges are market-dependent and may be modified in the future.In addition to base salary, the compensation for this role includes opportunities for equity grants. Talk to your recruiter for more information.DoorDash cares about you and your overall well-being. That’s why we offer a comprehensive benefits package to all regular employees, which includes a 401(k) plan with employer matching, 16 weeks of paid parental leave, wellness benefits, commuter benefits match, paid time off and paid sick leave in compliance with applicable laws (e.g. Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act). DoorDash also offers medical, dental, and vision benefits, 11 paid holidays, disability and basic life insurance, family-forming assistance, and a mental health program, among others.To learn more about our benefits, visit our careers page here.See below for paid time off details:For salaried roles: flexible paid time off/vacation, plus 80 hours of paid sick time per year.For hourly roles: vacation accrued at about 1 hour for every 25.97 hours worked (e.g. about 6.7 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 3.4 hours/month if working 20 hours/week), and paid sick time accrued at 1 hour for every 30 hours worked (e.g. about 5.8 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 2.9 hours/month if working 20 hours/week).The national base pay range for this position within the United States, including Illinois and Colorado.$231,200—$340,000 USDAbout DoorDashAt DoorDash, our mission to empower local economies shapes how our team members move quickly, learn, and reiterate in order to make impactful decisions that display empathy for our range of users—from Dashers to merchant partners to consumers. We are a technology and logistics company that started by enabling door-to-door delivery, and we are looking for team members who can help us go from a company that is known as the place you order food to a company that people turn to for any and all goods.DoorDash is growing rapidly and changing constantly, which gives our team members the opportunity to share their unique perspectives, solve new challenges, and own their careers. We're committed to supporting employees’ happiness, healthiness, and overall well-being by providing comprehensive benefits and perks including premium healthcare, wellness expense reimbursement, paid parental leave and more.Our Commitment to Diversity and InclusionWe’re committed to growing and empowering a more inclusive community within our company, industry, and cities. That’s why we hire and cultivate diverse teams of people from all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. We believe that true innovation happens when everyone has room at the table and the tools, resources, and opportunity to excel.Statement of Non-Discrimination: In keeping with our beliefs and goals, no employee or applicant will face discrimination or harassment based on: race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, age, gender, marital/domestic partner status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability status, or veteran status. Above and beyond discrimination and harassment based on “protected categories,” we also strive to prevent other subtler forms of inappropriate behavior (i.e., stereotyping) from ever gaining a foothold in our office. Whether blatant or hidden, barriers to success have no place at DoorDash. We value a diverse workforce – people who identify as women, non-binary or gender non-conforming, LGBTQIA+, American Indian or Native Alaskan, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latinx, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, differently-abled, caretakers and parents, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply. Thank you to the Level Playing Field Institute for this statement of non-discrimination.Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, and any other state or local hiring regulations, we will consider for employment any qualified applicant, including those with arrest and conviction records, in a manner consistent with the applicable regulation.If you need any accommodations, please inform your recruiting contact upon initial connection.Notice to Applicants for Jobs Located in NYC or Remote Jobs Associated With Office in NYC OnlyWe used Covey as part of our hiring and/or promotional process for jobs in NYC and certain features may qualify it as an AEDT in NYC. As part of the hiring and/or promotion process, we provided Covey with job requirements and candidate submitted applications. We began using Covey Scout for Inbound from August 21, 2023, through December 21, 2023. We resumed using Covey Scout for Inbound again on June 29, 2024, and ceased using Covey Scout for Inbound on April 30, 2026.The Covey tool has been reviewed by an independent auditor. Results of the audit may be viewed here:.