Principal Analyst, AI Solutions

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* Job Summary:

** The Data and Innovation team is seeking a Retrieval Strategist to serve as product manager and technical strategist for our search and content retrieval capabilities. In this role, you will lead the evolution of search infrastructure to support both traditional keyword-based search and modern AI-powered retrieval patterns including RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), MCP servers, and conversational search agents. You will be responsible for defining how search capabilities must adapt to effectively serve AI applications while maintaining excellence in traditional search use cases.

This role requires deep software engineering expertise, particularly in search engineering, combined with product management skills to drive the team's roadmap and prioritize initiatives. You will focus heavily on retrieval quality, establishing processes and metrics to monitor performance and rapidly address issues, while also researching emerging technologies like vector search and hybrid search approaches to inform the team's strategic direction.

At Red Hat, our commitment to open source innovation extends beyond our products - it’s embedded in how we work and grow. Red Hatters embrace change – especially in our fast-moving technological landscape – and have a strong growth mindset. That's why we encourage our teams to proactively, thoughtfully, and ethically use AI to simplify their workflows, cut complexity, and boost efficiency.

This empowers our associates to focus on higher-impact work, creating smart, more innovative solutions that solve our customers' most pressing challenges.
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* What you will do:

*** Serve as product manager for the search and content retrieval team, defining roadmap, priorities, and success metrics
* Develop and implement retrieval quality frameworks, including monitoring, testing, and rapid issue resolution processes
* Define technical strategy for supporting AI applications, including RAG pipelines, MCP server integrations, and conversational search interfaces
* Research and experiment with emerging retrieval technologies including vector search, hybrid search, semantic search, and embedding-based approaches
* Collaborate with AI/ML teams to understand retrieval requirements for AI agents and ensure search infrastructure meets their needs
* Work with content management teams to optimize content indexing, metadata, and structure for improved retrieval quality
* Establish performance benchmarks and quality metrics for both traditional and AI-powered retrieval use cases
* Lead proof-of-concept projects to validate new retrieval approaches and technologies
* Provide technical guidance to the search engineering team on architecture and implementation decisions
* Partner with application teams to integrate search capabilities and gather feedback on retrieval quality
* Stay current with industry trends in information retrieval, search technologies, and AI-powered content discovery
* Create documentation and best practices for search integration patterns and optimization techniques
* Analyze search usage patterns and quality metrics to identify opportunities for improvement
** What you will bring:
*** 8+ years of software engineering experience with significant focus on search engineering and information retrieval
* Deep expertise in search technologies such as Elasticsearch, Solr, or similar platforms
* Strong understanding of search algorithms, relevance ranking, and query processing techniques
* Experience with vector databases and embedding-based search approaches (e.g., FAISS, Pinecone, Weaviate)
* Knowledge of RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architectures and their application to AI systems
* Familiarity with natural language processing and semantic search concepts
* Product management experience or demonstrated ability to manage roadmaps and drive technical initiatives
* Strong programming skills in languages such as Python, Java, or similar
* Experience implementing search quality metrics and monitoring systems
* Understanding of distributed systems and scalability challenges in search infrastructure
* Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills with data-driven decision-making…