About Muck Rack
Muck Rack is trusted by thousands of organizations around the world to understand how their brands show up across news, social media and AI-generated answers. Our AI-powered platform connects the entire PR workflow in one place, helping communications teams manage media relationships, understand the conversations shaping their brands, take action and measure their impact. Combined with analyst-led Media Intelligence and advisory services, Muck Rack turns signals into insights and insights into action. Founder-controlled and growing profitably and sustainably, we have the freedom to build forward-thinking products, put our customers first, and offer an inclusive culture that welcomes diverse perspectives.
The Role
We’re looking for a collaborative, self-motivated Senior Software Engineer, Search & AI to join our growing team. As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll help build and evolve the customer-facing search experiences that help users discover relevant, high-quality content, along with the backend systems that power them. You’ll work across the stack, with a slight emphasis on frontend development, and collaborate closely with engineers, Product, and Design to deliver intuitive search experiences backed by reliable, scalable search and data systems.
What You'll Do
- Own and deliver customer-facing search features and workflows across frontend and backend systems, from technical planning through production
- Build AI-powered product experiences end to end, from the services behind them to the interfaces that make their output useful and trustworthy
- Build intuitive, responsive user experiences using Vue while contributing to the Python and Django services that power them
- Design and improve search, indexing, and retrieval systems that support high-quality content discovery across large volumes of data
- Build and maintain features and data workflows that leverage technologies such as Elasticsearch, Kafka, Celery, and MySQL
- Make thoughtful technical decisions and trade-offs that balance customer experience, delivery speed, performance, reliability, and long-term maintainability
- Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and engineering teammates to shape solutions, clarify requirements, and deliver high-quality customer experiences
- Troubleshoot complex production issues and drive improvements to the performance, reliability, observability, and maintainability of the systems you work on
- Participate in an on-call and incident response rotation, helping diagnose and resolve production issues and improve system reliability over time
Why Muck Rack?
- Remote Work, Forever: Fully distributed team with a permanent remote setup, home office stipend, phone and internet reimbursement, coworking membership, and virtual/in-person team bonding.
- Transparent & Fair Compensation: Competitive pay, annual reviews to ensure equity and market alignment, standardized bonus or commission structure, and equity opportunities.
- Health & Wellness: Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance, 100% premium coverage for individuals on high-deductible plans, 24/7 Virtual Care, Employee Assistance Program, employer-funded HSA contributions, quarterly wellness stipend, and free Headspace subscription.
- Time Off & Family Benefits: 4+ weeks of PTO, plus paid sick and mental health days, 13 paid holidays with the option to swap for personal days, and up to 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave.
- Learning and Development: Transparent pathways for internal mobility and promotion, bi-annual performance reviews, team workshops, leadership training, unlimited access to Coursera and O’Reilly, and 2 additional PTO days annually for learning and development.
- Inclusive, Customer-First Culture: Commitment to equity and valuing diverse perspectives, and an agile, founder-led company focused on collaboration and innovation.
To Be Set Up for Success in This Role, You'll Need to Have
- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience building and maintaining production software
- Strong experience working across frontend and backend systems and independently delivering features throughout the application stack
- Proficiency with Python or a similar programming language and experience with Django or a comparable web framework
- Experience building polished, maintainable user-facing applications with Vue.js or another modern JavaScript framework
- Experience with Elasticsearch or a comparable search technology, or significant experience working with data-intensive systems
- Experience making technical trade-offs within complex production systems while balancing immediate delivery needs with long-term quality
- Experience diagnosing production issues and contributing to the reliability and operational health of the systems you build
- Experience with TypeScript in a large codebase
- Experience with design systems or shared component libraries
- Flexibility to adjust working hours for overlap with teammates in US time zones
Additional Desired Skills
- Experience with Kafka or other streaming or event-driven technologies
- Experience with MySQL, Postgres, or other relational databases
- Experience with Celery or other asynchronous task-processing systems
- Experience building search, discovery, indexing, or information-retrieval features
- Experience improving frontend architecture, performance, or complex customer-facing workflows
- Experience working with high-traffic SaaS applications or systems that process large volumes of data
- Experience building customer-facing features backed by LLMs or other AI models
- Experience judging whether an AI-backed feature is actually working, through evaluation, testing, or user feedback
- Interest in journalism, news, media, or social media
Soft Skills
- Communicate complex technical ideas clearly and collaborate effectively with both technical and non-technical partners
- Take ownership of problems and drive work forward independently while knowing when to involve others
- Take pride in building readable, testable, maintainable software while making pragmatic technical trade-offs
- Approach ambiguous or complex problems thoughtfully and use sound judgment to identify effective solutions
- Contribute to a strong engineering culture through thoughtful code reviews, knowledge sharing, feedback, and continuous improvement
- Proactively incorporates AI tools into day-to-day work to improve productivity and accelerate delivery
