Principal Software Engineer - Search Infra - Elasticsearch

Role: Principal Software Engineer for the Elasticsearch - Search Infra team. This globally distributed team focuses on delivering a robust and feature-rich search experience, including contributing to improving the search experience in Lucene. This role provides technical vision and direction for Elasticsearch's core search infrastructure, including indexing, retrieval, and relevance, and requires deep expertise in search internals and cross-team collaboration.

Elastic is distributed by intention. We collaborate across continents every day using email, GitHub, Zoom, and Slack. We write fast, scalable, and intuitive software, empower engineers, review changes, make decisions by consensus, and strive for incremental improvements.

As a full-time Elasticsearch contributor, you will define, lead, and contribute to the evolution of core search and indexing capabilities. You will research advances in search infrastructure, data structures, and retrieval algorithms to build efficient foundations for users. You will work with partners and product teams to understand needs and shape the long-term technical vision for search at Elastic. You will bring experience with large-scale search systems to drive an innovative roadmap for Elasticsearch's indexing, query execution, and relevance layers. As an authority in several Elasticsearch areas, you will be the go-to expert for those domains and continuously improve them through your insights., * Experience leading technical projects in the search infrastructure and distributed systems space, building and operating sophisticated search platforms and high-performance software systems.

• Experience mentoring expert engineers, providing technical and professional guidance.
• Experience defining a long-term technical vision for a core search or retrieval system, working across teams to shape the technical roadmap.
• Hands-on experience with search and indexing technologies such as Elasticsearch, Lucene, or Solr.
• Strong skills in core Java and familiarity with data structures, concurrency constructs, and modern language features like lambdas; desire to optimize algorithms and data structures.
• Ability to work autonomously, guiding projects from concept to completion including technical design and cross-team collaboration.
• Experience with large-scale data or search systems such as Elasticsearch, Lucene, Solr, or distributed storage engines, and understanding of how they work.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and the ability to collaborate across distributed teams.

Bonus Points

• Experience building with Elasticsearch and knowledge of information retrieval concepts.
• Experience with open source projects and familiarity with different source control workflows and continuous integration.

Compensation for this role is base salary with no variable component. Salary ranges are based on external market benchmarks, internal pay equity, and the responsibilities of the role. The final offer depends on relevant experience, skills, and the complexity of the position.

Typical starting salary range: €80,400 - €127,200 EUR.

Elastic is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to creating an inclusive culture that celebrates diverse perspectives and backgrounds. We provide competitive pay, health coverage for you and your family in many locations, flexible schedules, generous vacation, and opportunities to contribute to charitable causes. We support accessibility and invite accommodations during the application process.