Seismic is hiring a Senior Software Engineer II - Backend - AI Search in the United States. The role sits inside one of the company's fastest-growing product areas: artificial intelligence. If you want to build backend systems that power enterprise-grade search and generative AI features, this position puts you right at the center of that work.
What Seismic Does and Why This Role Matters
Seismic builds sales enablement software for enterprise marketing and sales teams. Its AI engine, Seismic Aura, powers intelligent features across its platform. The company is actively weaving generative AI into how sales teams find content, interact with customers, and close deals.
The Senior Software Engineer II role focuses on backend systems. You will work on search infrastructure, content discovery, and AI-powered capabilities. These are not small, isolated features. They affect how thousands of enterprise users work every day.
Years of Experience Required
Seismic sets a clear experience floor for this position. The company expects candidates to bring 8 or more years of software engineering experience. That experience must include a track record of building and scaling microservices. You should also have hands-on history with data retrieval systems.
This is a senior-level role with senior-level expectations. Junior engineers building toward this path should plan for a multi-year journey. The role demands both breadth and depth.
Core Technical Skills You Need
C# and .NET Proficiency
Seismic runs much of its backend on C# and .NET. The job posting asks for at least five years of experience with these technologies. That includes unit testing, object-oriented programming, and building web services. Strong .NET skills are non-negotiable for this position.
You need to understand how .NET applications are structured at scale. Dependency injection, async programming, and API design patterns matter here. Familiarity with the .NET ecosystem beyond just syntax is what separates strong candidates from average ones.
Python Development
The role also requires at least three years of Python experience. What makes this interesting is that Seismic expects engineers to work across both Python and .NET repositories at the same time. You cannot treat Python as a secondary skill you use occasionally.
Python appears throughout AI and machine learning workflows. Engineers at Seismic likely use it for data processing, model integration, and scripting alongside .NET services. Comfort switching between the two languages daily is essential.
Redis Expertise
Seismic uses Redis heavily, and the posting asks for three or more years of Redis experience. Specifically, they want engineers who have managed large-scale Redis clusters. That means understanding replication, failover, eviction policies, and performance tuning under load.
Redis often powers caching layers and session management in high-traffic systems. In a search and AI context, low-latency data access matters enormously. Engineers who have only used Redis as a simple cache at small scale may find this requirement challenging.
PostgreSQL
Two or more years of PostgreSQL experience is required. The posting specifically calls out maintaining and tuning databases. That goes beyond writing queries. Seismic wants engineers who understand indexing strategies, query planning, and database performance at scale.
Test-Driven Development
Seismic takes testing seriously. The role requires proficiency in Test Driven Development, with hands-on experience using xUnit and Postman to build automation test scripts. Writing tests after the fact is not what this team is looking for. You need to write tests first as part of your development process.
Infrastructure as Code
Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform or Pulumi is listed in the job requirements. Engineers at this level are expected to provision and manage cloud infrastructure, not just write application code. Knowing how to define infrastructure declaratively is a modern backend engineering requirement.
Event-Driven Architecture and Kafka
Event-driven architectures are central to how modern microservices communicate. Seismic specifically calls out Kafka. You should understand how Kafka handles message streaming, partitioning, consumer groups, and fault tolerance. This skill becomes critical when building systems that process search events and AI model outputs at scale.
Containers and Docker
Proficiency in Docker and container technologies is required. Containerization is standard in microservices environments. Engineers need to build, manage, and debug containerized services as part of their daily work.
Soft Skills That Matter at Seismic
Cross-Functional Collaboration
The job description emphasizes working with cross-functional teams. Backend engineers at Seismic collaborate with product managers, data scientists, and frontend engineers. You need to communicate technical constraints clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
Systems Thinking
Designing scalable, high-performance systems requires more than coding ability. You need to think about how components interact, where bottlenecks form, and how failures cascade. Systems thinking is a soft skill that experienced engineers develop through years of debugging and scaling real products.
Ownership and Initiative
At senior levels, companies expect engineers to take ownership of outcomes. Waiting for instructions does not fit this role. Seismic wants engineers who identify problems, propose solutions, and drive technical decisions independently.
AI and Search Knowledge
The role specifically focuses on AI Search. Engineers joining this team should have familiarity with search infrastructure concepts. That includes inverted indexes, relevance ranking, vector embeddings, and semantic search techniques.
Generative AI integration is part of the work. Understanding how large language models connect to backend retrieval systems, often called Retrieval-Augmented Generation, gives candidates a meaningful advantage. This is a growing area, and engineers who have experimented with these architectures stand out.
How to Build These Skills
Strengthen Your .NET and Python Foundations
If your .NET skills are rusty, Microsoft's official documentation and platforms like Pluralsight offer structured learning paths. For Python, building small data processing projects or contributing to open-source AI tools builds practical experience quickly. The goal is fluency in both, not just familiarity.
Work With Redis and PostgreSQL at Scale
Spinning up Redis locally is easy. Managing it under real load is harder. Seek out projects or roles that involve caching strategy decisions and database performance tuning. Free cloud tiers on platforms like AWS or GCP let you experiment with managed versions of both technologies.
Practice Test-Driven Development Daily
TDD is a discipline, not a tool. The best way to build this skill is to force yourself to write tests before code on every personal or professional project. Using xUnit for .NET projects and pairing that with Postman for API testing mirrors what Seismic describes directly.
Build With Kafka and Terraform
Confluent offers a free Kafka tier for learning. Building a small event-driven application with producers and consumers teaches the fundamentals quickly. For Terraform, the HashiCorp learning platform provides free, hands-on tutorials that cover real infrastructure provisioning scenarios.
Explore Vector Search and AI Retrieval
Tools like Elasticsearch, Weaviate, and Pinecone all offer free tiers. Building a small semantic search project using vector embeddings and connecting it to an open-source language model demonstrates practical AI search knowledge. This type of portfolio work signals readiness for a role like Seismic's.
Applications for this position are open now. Qualified engineers can apply directly at https://himalayas.app/companies/seismic-co/jobs/senior-software-engineer-ii-backend-ai-search.
