Research Engineer, Generalist

About this role

Exa is hiring a Generalist Research Engineer to work on its advanced search infrastructure powering major products like Cursor and HubSpot. You'll contribute across the full stack—from web crawling and parsing to ML model optimization and retrieval algorithms—to build the next generation of search technology.

What you'll do

• Design and implement parsers and systems to improve search retrieval performance
• Optimize throughput and latency of machine learning models
• Enhance web crawler efficiency and scalability
• Work across crawling, parsing, ML performance, and retrieval algorithm domains
• Collaborate with customers to understand needs and translate them into system improvements
• Ship high-impact features quickly while maintaining code quality

What they're looking for

• Large-scale system design and infrastructure
• Machine learning and embeddings
• Web crawling and data parsing
• Performance optimization (throughput/latency)
• Vector databases and retrieval systems
• Software engineering across multiple domains
• Problem-solving and debugging
• Communication with stakeholders

Benefits

• Premium healthcare (medical, dental, vision)
• Fertility benefits
• 16 weeks fully paid parental leave
• Monthly wellness stipend
• Visa sponsorship available
• In-person San Francisco location