Senior Java Search Engineer – Elasticsearch/OpenSearch (f/m/d)

kfzteile24 is Germany's leading digital company for car parts and automotive equipment. As a Berlin-based multichannel company, we own successful online shops like kfzteile24.de, autoteile24.de, and carpardoo in multiple European countries. We are Germany's best-known brand in the online aftermarket. With expert advice, a wide range of products and fast, reliable deliveries, we ensure individual mobility for our customers.

As a Senior Java Search Engineer - Elasticsearch/Opensearch (f/m/d), you will join our cross-functional team responsible for the search engine that powers our e-commerce platform. You will help build and continuously improve a high-performance, highly available, and automotive-aware search solution that enables our customers to find exactly the right part for their vehicle. You will work closely with developers, product owners, QA and DevOps to design, implement, and optimize our search services based on Java, OpenSearch, Elasticsearch and AWS technologies.

What we offer

• Permanent employment contract and 30 days vacation

• Possibility of home office 3 days a week

• Internal and external training opportunities

• Up to 50% employee discount in our branches and workshops

• Various health and sport offers (e.g. Bike-Leasing, VDU glasses)

• Additional benefits such as language courses via Babbel, company pension plan, corporate benefits

Your responsibility

• Design and implement scalable search functionalities and services in Java

• Own end-to-end the lifecycle of search features: from design to deployment

• Ensure high availability and low latency under high traffic conditions

• Tune and extend OpenSearch and Elasticsearch capabilities for our specific use case (e.g., vehicle-fitment search, attribute-based filtering, as well as sorting)

• Collaborate on API and data model design to support efficient, relevant and personalized search results

• Actively contribute to architectural discussions and code reviews

• Continuously monitor, benchmark and improve the search performance

• Ensure testability, observability and maintainability of the search systems

• Share knowledge within the team and mentor other engineers where needed

Your skills

• 5+ years in software engineering with a strong backend and Java/JVM focus

• Expertise in search technologies (OpenSearch, Elasticsearch, Solr, Lucene)

• Strong understanding of search relevance, indexing, querying, and performance tuning

• Experience with high-load & large-scale distributed systems, REST APIs and microservices

• Skilled in cloud environments and containers (AWS, Docker, Kubernetes)

• Pragmatic & collaborative mindset, and strong communication skills (English required, German a plus)

Bonus Skills

• Experience in the automotive domain or similar structured product spaces

• Knowledge of vehicle-specific product data modeling and fitment logic

• Exposure to observability tools (e.g., New Relic, OpenTelemetry)

• Skills in CI/CD and Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, GitLab CI, Jenkins, etc.)

Apply now!

If you would like to be part of our motivated IT-Team, apply now for the position with us as Senior Java Search Engineer - Elasticsearch/Opensearch (f/m/d), stating your salary expectations and your earliest starting date. If you have any questions, please contact Irina Ring at +49 01520 315 4804.

Please note that we only consider applications via our online portal. Applications by post or e-mail will not be considered and disposed of or deleted.

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