Search Engineer Jobs in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Senior Search Engineer – E‑Commerce (Solr Cloud)
About the role
Role Overview
We are seeking a Senior Search Engineer – E‑Commerce (Solr Cloud) for a permanent position to own and continuously elevate the enterprise search experience on our large-scale eCommerce platform. This hands-on IT role focuses on search relevance optimization, performance at scale, advanced parametric search, and Solr Cloud excellence to support retailer-grade catalogs and high-traffic customer journeys. You will work closely with front-end engineers, back-end developers, and business stakeholders to translate customer behavior into measurable search improvements—ensuring search is not just a system, but a product capability that drives discoverability, conversion, and customer satisfaction.
Key Responsibilities
Search Relevance & Customer-Focused Result Accuracy Improve keyword-to-product matching so customers quickly find relevant products using real-world search terms. Tune Solr relevance using ranking and boosting strategies, query weighting and scoring models, and analyzer configuration (synonyms, stemming, stop words, language analyzers). Optimize search behavior for partial keywords, short queries, misspellings, search variations, and product codes vs. descriptive terms. Partner with front-end teams to ensure search UI, ranking logic, and user expectations align.
Large-Scale eCommerce & SKU Volume Management Architect and optimize Solr collections to support retailer-grade catalogs (hundreds of thousands to millions of SKUs). Ensure search performance and stability under high catalog complexity, high query concurrency, and seasonal/promotional traffic spikes. Optimize sharding, replication, and caching strategies for both relevance and low latency. Apply retail-specific search best practices (category-aware relevance, attribute prioritization, product discoverability).
Parametric & Faceted Search Optimization Design and optimize advanced faceted search across product attributes (dimensions, categories, ranges, technical specs). Ensure faceted navigation remains fast and accurate at scale, supports complex filtering use cases, and works seamlessly with relevance ranking. Collaborate with business and merchandising stakeholders to ensure attributes and filters reflect customer expectations.
Indexing Strategy (Full & Incremental) Own and improve the indexing architecture supporting high-volume catalogs and frequent data updates. Optimize full reindex execution time and stability, incremental (partial) indexing for near-real-time updates and minimize impact on live query performance. Work closely with back-end developers and data teams to validate data quality, schema evolution, and zero-downtime index changes.
Search Analytics & Continuous Improvement Analyze Solr logs and analytics to identify "no result" queries, low-quality matches, relevance gaps, and opportunities for synonym expansion or schema enhancements. Establish a continuous improvement cycle driven by real customer search behavior. Translate analytical findings into concrete configuration, data, or UI improvements.
Solr Cloud Platform Excellence Leverage Solr Cloud features such as distributed indexing, shard management, and replication to ensure resilience and scalability. Define and maintain operational best practices: monitoring, alerting, capacity planning, performance baselines, tuning playbooks, incident response, and root cause analysis. Act as the Solr/search subject matter expert within the IT organization.
Required Qualifications 5+ years of hands-on experience in search engineering or relevance optimization. Proven experience supporting large-scale retailers or enterprise eCommerce sites with high SKU counts and customer traffic. Strong hands-on experience with Apache Solr / Solr Cloud in production environments. Deep understanding of information retrieval concepts (ranking, scoring, precision/recall). Strong experience tuning relevance, analyzers, schemas, and query behavior. Experience diagnosing performance and relevance issues using logs and metrics. Experience working closely with front-end and back-end engineering teams. Comfortable translating business and customer requirements into technical search solutions. Strong documentation and communication skills.
Nice to Have Experience with enterprise or large retail brands and complex catalogs. Exposure to SAP Commerce Cloud or similar enterprise eCommerce platforms. Experience with search analytics dashboards and KPIs. Understanding of merchandising rules, product taxonomies, and personalization. Bilingual English/French.
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About Future Electronics
Welcome to Future Electronics! We are a worldwide leader in electronic components distribution and are recognized as one of the most innovative companies in the industry.
Are you ready for your next challenge? Our growing teams are always looking for driven, hardworking people to join us. At Future Electronics, we pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. This means a stimulating work environment where opportunities and growth are always within reach. Leaders who care about your success and colleagues who share common goals. To learn more about what it's like working with us, take a look at our Life pages.
Our people fuel our mission. Our enthusiasm, innovation, and drive to succeed are what make us a global powerhouse in electronic component distribution. With an entrepreneurial spirit and a can-do attitude, we are always up for the challenge. We strive to solve whatever problems are in front of us - for our customers and our suppliers.
Become part of a +$35 billion business: check out our job postings to find your next role.
Bienvenue chez Future Electronics! Nous sommes un leader mondial dans la distribution de composants électroniques et sommes reconnus comme l’une des entreprises les plus innovantes de l’industrie.
Êtes-vous prêt(e) pour votre prochain défi ? Nos équipes en pleine croissance sont toujours à la recherche de personnes motivées et travaillantes pour se joindre à nous. Chez Future Electronics, nous sommes fiers d’être un employeur de choix. Cela signifie un environnement de travail stimulant où les opportunités et l’évolution professionnelle sont toujours à portée de main. Des leaders qui se soucient de votre réussite et des collègues qui partagent des objectifs communs.
Faites partie d’une entreprise de plus de 35 milliards de dollars : consultez nos offres d’emploi pour trouver votre prochain poste.