Principal Software Engineer - Search

Docusign brings agreements to life. Over 1.5 million customers and more than a billion people in over 180 countries use Docusign solutions to accelerate the process of doing business and simplify people's lives. With intelligent agreement management, Docusign unleashes business-critical data that is trapped inside of documents. Until now, these were disconnected from business systems of record, costing businesses time, money, and opportunity. Using Docusign's Intelligent Agreement Management platform, companies can create, commit, and manage agreements with solutions created by the #1 company in e-signature and contract lifecycle management (CLM).

The Docusign AI team is seeking a Principal Software Architect to act as a seasoned subject matter expert and architect the next generation of our Search & Data Platform. As part of the Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) initiative, our team is transforming customer-facing search capabilities to a modern, highly scalable cloud data platform. You serve as the technical architect behind the discovery engine that powers the world's most critical agreements. By bridging the gap between robust distributed infrastructure and advanced ML features, you ensure that millions of users can instantaneously extract intelligence and value from their vast repositories of contracts. You drive business growth by transforming Search from a utility into a competitive advantage, collaborating closely with the AI/ML teams and directly impacting the scalability of our entire platform.

We are looking for an extensively experienced builder who loves advancing search infrastructure, distributed systems, and solving "never-been-done-before" problems at scale. You will work closely with product leaders and engineering leadership ensuring our solutions are fault-tolerant, secure, and blazingly fast, while consistently driving innovation that advances the overall business.

This position is an individual contributor role reporting to the Senior Director, Applied Science.

Responsibility

• Conceive and develop new architectural strategies with a long-range vision, significantly accelerating the Search and Data function's capabilities

• Drive the strategic roadmap and execution for Docusign's search infrastructure, ensuring the platform is scalable, resilient, and capable of indexing billions of global agreements

• Design and build fault-tolerant, high-throughput search systems using microservices architecture (primarily C#/.NET or Java) and provide technical direction to the team

• Search Engine Optimization

• Lead the implementation and optimization of search clusters to ensure sub-second query performance across petabytes of data with enterprise-grade security and reliability

• Represent the engineering function in large-scale, complex cross-functional initiatives

• Act as a matrix leader to drive engineering best practices and translate product requirements into technical designs

• Act as a seasoned coach and mentor to experienced team members

• Elevate team problem-solving, and influencing skills, champion an equitable, inclusive work environment by acting as an ally and expanding your team's access to networks and resources

• Identify and resolve production issues, ensuring 99.99% availability for critical search services

• Extract added value by continuously raising the standards and expectations across projects and teams

• Routinely represent Docusign in external collaborations, acting as a company spokesperson with thought leaders, industry associations, and key customers regarding our search and data capabilities

• Work collaboratively across engineering functions, timezones and geographies

Hybrid: Employee divides their time between in-office and remote work. Access to an office location is required. (Frequency: Minimum 2 days per week; may vary by team but will be weekly in-office expectation)

Positions at Docusign are assigned a job designation of either In Office, Hybrid or Remote and are specific to the role/job. Preferred job designations are not guaranteed when changing positions within Docusign. Docusign reserves the right to change a position's job designation depending on business needs and as permitted by local law.

Basic

• BA/BS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Informatics, or equivalent; an advanced degree is highly preferred

• 15+ years of software development experience in object-oriented languages (C#, Java, C++, or Go), with extensive experience gained in a corporate or relevant business environment

• 6+ years of experience with large-scale data systems and search engines (e.g., Elasticsearch, Solr) including cluster tuning, index design, and scaling search workloads in a production environment

• Proven track record of delivering search-related infrastructure or features that handle high-volume data ingestion and complex retrieval requirements

• 5+ years of experience with distributed data processing frameworks (e.g., Apache Spark, Kafka)

• 4+ years of experience building scalable services in public cloud environments (Azure, AWS, or GCP)

• Experience with Agile/Scrum methodologies, CI/CD pipelines (Git, Jenkins, Azure DevOps), and navigating teams through ambiguity and change

• Experience leading highly complex functional and cross-functional projects and teams

Preferred

• Master's or PhD degree in Computer Science or a related field

• Experience with the Microsoft technology stack (.NET Core, C#, SQL Server)

• Direct involvement in the design and operation of high-availability SaaS platforms (99.9%+ uptime)

• Familiarity with modern frontend frameworks (React) to understand how customers consume search APIs

• Experience with leveraging vectorDBs, LLMs and embedding models

• Background in LegalTech or FinTech, specifically working with OCR, unstructured document indexing, or contract lifecycle management (CLM)

• Proven track record of effective, long-range innovation that has significantly advanced a function or overall business

Pay for this position is based on a number of factors including geographic location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

Based on applicable legislation, the below details pay ranges in the following locations:

California: $202,800.00 - $327,625.00 base salary

Washington, Maryland, New Jersey and New York (including NYC metro area): $193,100.00 - $286,500.00 base salary

This role is also eligible for the following:

• Bonus: Sales personnel are eligible for variable incentive pay dependent on their achievement of pre-established sales goals. Non-Sales roles are eligible for a company bonus plan, which is calculated as a percentage of eligible wages and dependent on company performance.
• Stock: This role is eligible to receive Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).

Global benefits provide options for the following:

• Paid Time Off: earned time off, as well as paid company holidays based on region
• Paid Parental Leave: take up to six months off with your child after birth, adoption or foster care placement
• Full Health Benefits Plans: options for 100% employer paid and minimum employee contribution health plans from day one of employment
• Retirement Plans: select retirement and pension programs with potential for employer contributions
• Learning and Development: options for coaching, online courses and education reimbursements
• Compassionate Care Leave: paid time off following the loss of a loved one and other life-changing events

Working here

Docusign is committed to building trust and making the world more agreeable for our employees, customers and the communities in which we live and work. You can count on us to listen, be honest, and try our best to do what's right, every day. At Docusign, everything is equal.

We each have a responsibility to ensure every team member has an equal opportunity to succeed, to be heard, to exchange ideas openly, to build lasting relationships, and to do the work of their life. Best of all, you will be able to feel deep pride in the work you do, because your contribution helps us make the world better than we found it. And for that, you'll be loved by us, our customers, and the world in which we live.

Accommodation

Docusign is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. If you need such an accommodation, or a religious accommodation, during the application process, please contact us at accommodations@docusign.com.

If you experience any issues, concerns, or technical difficulties during the application process please get in touch with our Talent organization at taops@docusign.com for assistance.

Applicant and Candidate Privacy Notice

This position is not eligible for employment in the following states: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.

It's important to us that we build a talented team that is as diverse as our customers and where all employees feel a deep sense of belonging and thrive. We encourage great talent who bring a range of perspectives to apply for our open positions. Docusign is an Equal Opportunity Employer and makes hiring decisions based on experience, skill, aptitude and a can-do approach. We will not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, color, age, sex, religion, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, physical or mental disability, registered domestic partner status, caregiver status, marital status, veteran or military status, or any other legally protected category.

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