Senior Search Engineer

Remote OK - Anywhere in Japan
Full-time
June 13, 2025

Are you looking

To make meaningful changes at the fastest-growing tech company in Japan?
For a fair, highly flexible, inclusive working environment where anyone, regardless of their background, can make an impact?
To build the next bold idea in customer acquisition and revenue growth through conversational commerce technology
For a place where things are not just fast - but they happen now?

We Are Zeals - “Designing conversations. Driving conversions.”

Zeals is not another chatbot. Our automated chat solution and conversational technology change how consumers purchase or act online. Zeals converts customers who appear "unengaged" to become "valuable" through designed chat on Messaging Apps. Using AI-powered, human-designed conversation flows across chat platforms, Zeals enables brands to build personalized, automated conversations with their consumers and develop a deeper understanding of their preferences while creating a delightful, seamless shopping experience. Our last 3 years have been phenomenal. We have captured the heart of many businesses in Japan, with over 480 enterprises relying on our chat commerce offering to boost their mobile business.

The goal is simple: to “revolutionize hospitality on the Internet” by unlocking digital customer service experiences that were limited to physical stores previously.

Just Getting Started…

With more than 480 enterprise companies worldwide already utilizing our product, we are perfectly poised to seize market share and fuel exponential growth in the US market, with an eye on global expansion. Investors have taken note of our potential, leading us to recently secure nearly $40 million in funding, backed by Salesforce Ventures.

As our Senior Search Engineer

As a Senior Search Engineer, you will be an integral part of our engineering team, focused on building and optimising search solutions that power our conversational commerce platform. You will design and implement search algorithms that improve the relevance, accuracy, and speed of our chat interactions, ensuring that users get the best possible experience. You will collaborate closely with product, data science, and engineering teams to build scalable, efficient search systems that handle massive volumes of data while delivering lightning-fast results. We’re looking for someone with at least 5 years of experience in search technology.

Your Typical Day With Us

Designing, developing, and optimizing search algorithms and infrastructure using technologies like Elasticsearch, Solr, or Lucene.
Integrating AI-powered models and machine learning to improve search relevance, speed, and accuracy.
Collaborate with NLP and data science teams to integrate semantic search and language models search enhancements.
Building and maintaining high-performance indexing, ranking, and query processing systems to ensure the quality and relevance of search results.
Tuning relevance metrics based on real-world data and continuously monitoring performance across various datasets and use cases.
Mentoring junior engineers, conducting code reviews, and participating in an on-call rotation with additional compensation.

What You’ll Need

5+ years of experience as a search engineer or in a directly related role, with a strong background in search algorithms, information retrieval, and ranking systems.
Expertise in search technologies like Elasticsearch, Solr, or Lucene—experience designing search systems is a must.
Proficiency in Python and/or Java for backend systems development.
Familiarity with semantic search, NLP, or embedding-based retrieval.
Proven ability to optimize query parsing, indexing, and relevance tuning for search systems.
Ability to collaborate effectively across teams and communicate complex search concepts clearly.
English proficiency is required. Conversational Japanese is a plus.

What Makes You Stand Out

Japanese language proficiency at a business or native level, allowing you to liaise with our primarily Japan-based users.
Knowledge of cultural differences and how they impact user behavior in search contexts.
Experience working with chatbot search systems, AI-driven search, or in SaaS environments.

Don’t just take our word for it

Zeals has received the LinkedIn Top Startups award twice in a row. We believe this is a testament to our growth and our ability to attract great talents–who could potentially be your colleague!

Ready to roll up our sleeves

We obsess over bringing hospitality to everyone–be it our customers or you! You’re an individual with unique needs. So, While we can’t attract you with ping-pong tables or all-you-can-drink espresso bars, we promise you a once-in-a-lifetime experience and co-workers that you can brag about to your friends, family, or anyone you meet the next time you go out for a party! . As an employer we are ready to roll-up our sleeves and change the status quo if it means to make your experience better!

Salary Range : competitive (performance review every 6 months)
Performance review: twice a year
Holidays: 10 days of annual leave in the first year, weekends off, national holidays, summer and winter breaks, and 5 refreshment leave days per year
Visa support: We sponsor visas for the right candidates. You can expect full visa support from our professional HR team.
Flexible working: Highly flexible, remote-first international organization

For Japanese residence: Work from anywhere, interim work from overseas, full flex time

Housing allowance (within 1.5KM away from office)
Club activity allowance
Shuffle Lunch allowance (Cross department lunch)
Zeals Bar (bi-monthly free flow beer party)

APPLY NOW ➜

About ZEALS

Build AI that Brings Japanese Omotenashi to the World

ZEALS is an AI company building intelligent products inspired by the Japanese concept of Omotenashi—anticipating people's needs and delivering exceptional experiences. What began as Japan's leading conversational commerce platform has evolved into an AI-native company developing products across autonomous AI agents and robotics.

Today, ZEALS operates three core businesses:

ZEALS AI Engagement, helping enterprise companies deliver personalized customer experiences through AI.
Omakase.ai, a platform for building autonomous AI agents capable of understanding, communicating, and taking action across voice and chat.
Omakase Robotics, developing a robot-agnostic AI operating system that enables robots to work naturally alongside people in real-world environments.

Together, these businesses share a single mission: creating AI that understands people, acts autonomously, and brings the spirit of Japanese hospitality to both digital and physical experiences.

From Market Leader to AI Pioneer

ZEALS established itself as the market leader in conversational commerce in Japan, working with hundreds of enterprise customers across industries including retail, beauty, travel, finance, and automotive.

Building on years of experience designing AI-powered customer interactions, the company has expanded into generative AI and embodied AI. Omakase.ai quickly gained international recognition after launching as the #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt, with thousands of AI agents created by users within its first months. Meanwhile, Omakase Robotics is applying the same AI capabilities to the physical world, developing software that enables robots to perform meaningful work in human environments.

With teams spanning AI, machine learning, cloud infrastructure, robotics, and product engineering, ZEALS continues to invest aggressively in technologies that shape the future of intelligent systems.

Building the Future of AI

Rather than treating AI as a feature, ZEALS builds products where AI is the core technology. Engineers work across a wide range of challenging technical domains, including:

Autonomous AI agents
Voice AI and multimodal interaction
Large Language Models (LLMs)
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
Distributed cloud infrastructure
Robotics software
Computer vision
Real-time systems

Small, highly autonomous teams own products end-to-end, from research and prototyping to deployment and continuous iteration. Engineers collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and AI researchers to rapidly ship new capabilities and solve real-world customer problems.

A Place to Grow

ZEALS has built a culture around ownership, rapid learning, and continuous experimentation. Employees are encouraged to challenge assumptions, move quickly, and take responsibility for delivering meaningful outcomes. The company also supports collaboration beyond day-to-day work through cross-functional lunches, club activities, social events, and opportunities to connect across teams.

Japanese Language Policy
At ZEALS, the product and technology team members primarily speak English (dev-related discussions happen in English on Github or Slack). There might be occasional discussions in Japanese, but most Slack messages are in English (or both languages).

As for meetings, all dev-related discussions take place in English. Given the above, Japanese skills are not required for most positions in the Product & Technology departments. However, one unique aspect of ZEALS’ culture is the desire to increase teamwork and engage with each other, which is why many Japanese members are working on their English skills while many non-Japanese members also work to improve their Japanese skills.

In order to build a truly global team, ZEALS has many multilingual members that proactively support the rest of the team to ensure smooth communications.

Even outside of the Product & Technology departments, all important company-wide announcements are made in both English and Japanese. For example, hiring announcements, new product launches etc. are generally announced in both Japanese and English.

Also, simultaneous interpretation for presentations at large meetings and events is provided to ensure that everyone gets the information they need.
Paid Leave
- All Japanese public holidays off
- 10 days of PTO (awarded 3 months after joining) in the first year
- 5 refreshment leave days per year
- Summer Holidays, Year-end Holidays, Childcare Leave, Congratulations/Bereavement Leave
Benefits
Here are some examples of the benefits which full-time employees can receive:

💻 Loaned Laptops

🇯🇵 Translation Support (EN<>JP)

👶 Shorter Work Hours for Employees Taking Care of Children

👶 Parental Leave

👕 Flexible Dress Code

💜 Social Security / Insurance Benefits Included

🏥 Healthcare Insurance, Periodic Health Checks

💚 Pension Insurance

🚃 Commuter Reimbursement
Remote Work
Although ZEALS requires you to either be in or relocate to Japan, once you’re here, you can choose whether you work from home or in the office.
- Full-time employees in Japan can work from home or come to the office. Transportation reimbursement to and from the office is available and people living close to the office can receive a housing allowance.
- If you’re not based in Japan yet, you can work from overseas while we help you obtain a Japanese working visa.
- Work from your home country 2 months per year.
Work style
ZEALS is flexible when it comes to working hours. They have core time from 1:00pm to 3:00pm JST, but otherwise you’re free to set up your day however you want to meet the monthly working hour requirements.
Values

FROM ZEAL

< Passion >
Good things come from giving it your all

BET ON PARADOX

< Unorthodox >
Never settle for the established norm

UNITED WILL

< Team >
Teamwork is the heart of achievement

Office

The ZEALS office is in the heart of Tokyo, situated in Meguro, near Gajoen, a famous hotel known for hospitality. You can work from the office at a desk as well as use small booths or meeting rooms. You can hook your laptop to large screens and sit in Ergohuman chairs. Lounge areas and standing tables are also available. Everyone is free to choose the work style that works best for them, either full-remote or in the office.