Optimizing Retrieval Components for a Shared Backbone via Component-Wise Multi-Stage Training

2026-01-31

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenge of deploying a shared retrieval backbone in industrial systems, where balancing performance and deployment flexibility across multiple downstream tasks remains difficult. To overcome the limitations of conventional approaches that rely on a single optimal checkpoint, the authors propose a multi-stage optimization framework that tailors component-level and hybrid-stage configuration strategies to the distinct performance characteristics of dense retrievers and rerankers throughout training. This approach significantly enhances the adaptability of the shared backbone and improves overall retrieval effectiveness. End-to-end evaluation demonstrates that the resulting shared retrieval service has been successfully deployed across multiple industrial applications, delivering substantial gains in both system performance and scalability.

Technology Category

• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search
• Computer Vision: Image and Video Retrieval
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Conversational Systems for Recommendation & Retrieval

Application Category

• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and multi-modal RAG
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Fairness-aware retrieval and ranking
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Querying, indexing, and retrieval in Web-related graphs

Abstract

Recent advances in embedding-based retrieval have enabled dense retrievers to serve as core infrastructure in many industrial systems, where a single retrieval backbone is often shared across multiple downstream applications. In such settings, retrieval quality directly constrains system performance and extensibility, while coupling model selection, deployment, and rollback decisions across applications. In this paper, we present empirical findings and a system-level solution for optimizing retrieval components deployed as a shared backbone in production legal retrieval systems. We adopt a multi-stage optimization framework for dense retrievers and rerankers, and show that different retrieval components exhibit stage-dependent trade-offs. These observations motivate a component-wise, mixed-stage configuration rather than relying on a single uniformly optimal checkpoint. The resulting backbone is validated through end-to-end evaluation and deployed as a shared retrieval service supporting multiple industrial applications.

Problem

• shared backbone
• retrieval optimization
• dense retrieval
• multi-stage training
• component-wise optimization

Innovation

• component-wise optimization
• multi-stage training
• shared retrieval backbone
• dense retrieval
• mixed-stage configuration