Principal Software Engineer - Elasticsearch Search Infrastructure

About the role

Elastic is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join its Elasticsearch - Search Infra team, a globally distributed group of experienced engineers focused on a robust, feature-rich search experience, including contributions to improving the search experience in Lucene. The role defines, directs and builds the next generation of Elasticsearch capabilities, giving technical vision and direction for indexing, retrieval and relevance, and calls for deep expertise in search internals and cross-team collaboration.

Key responsibilities

• Define, lead and contribute to the evolution of core search and indexing capabilities
• Research advances in search infrastructure, data structures and retrieval algorithms
• Work with partners and product teams to understand their needs and shape the long-term technical vision for search
• Use past experience with large-scale search systems to drive an innovative roadmap for indexing, query execution and relevance
• Serve as the go-to expert in several Elasticsearch domains and continuously improve them

Required profile

• Experience leading technical projects in search infrastructure and distributed systems
• Proven knowledge of building and operating sophisticated search platforms and high-performance software systems
• Experience mentoring expert engineers, technically and professionally
• Experience defining a long-term technical vision for a core search or retrieval system across teams
• Able to work autonomously, from concept to completion, including technical design and collaboration
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills

Required skills

• Hands-on experience with Elasticsearch, Lucene or Solr
• Core Java, advanced data structures, concurrency constructs and modern language features such as lambdas
• Understanding of large-scale search and distributed storage systems
• Bonus: prior work with Elasticsearch, open source projects, source control workflows and CI

What we offer

• Base salary only, with no variable component; typical range €102,700 to €162,500
• Flexible locations and schedules, generous vacation days and parental leave of at least 16 weeks
• Health coverage for you and your family in many locations
• Company matching of up to $2,000 for donations and up to 40 hours per year for volunteering