Data/ML/AIBackendAround since 2019
Semantic Search
Also written as Vector Search, Similarity Search
Search that matches on meaning rather than exact words, by comparing numerical representations of text — so 'car won't start' can find a document about dead batteries.
Think of it like
A librarian who understands what you're asking about, rather than one who only matches the words on the spine.
Junior or senior?
Junior sounds like
Has called an embedding API.
Senior sounds like
Talks about chunking and where semantic search fails — it's bad at exact identifiers, dates and negation.
Ask them
“Where did semantic search give you worse results than plain keyword matching?”