Senior Software Engineer - Elasticsearch Performance Tuning

About the role

Elastic is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join its Elasticsearch Performance team. The role contributes to performance engineering initiatives through high-quality code and technical analysis, helping improve the optimization and predictability of Elasticsearch performance and collaborating with area-specific teams.

Key responsibilities

• Contribute to core performance engineering initiatives from development to production, delivering impactful optimizations
• Execute technical designs and plans for architectural and code-level performance improvements
• Implement foundational performance models and methodologies for complex, distributed systems
• Support optimization strategies so Elasticsearch stays performant, predictable and scalable in diverse environments
• Profile and analyze system behavior to find bottlenecks in logging, metrics, vector search and ES|QL
• Ensure robust performance benchmarks and regression detection for stateful and serverless architectures
• Apply performance-focused development practices to new features and build AI-assisted optimization harnesses for profiling, hypothesis testing and benchmarking
• Provide technical guidance and peer reviews to other engineers

Required profile

• Deep knowledge of Java internals and JVM memory management, with high-performance, thread-safe, lock-free code
• Proven experience profiling and optimizing distributed systems, including benchmarking tools such as JMH and Rally
• Solid understanding of distributed systems architecture, including partition tolerance, cluster state propagation and scaling
• Track record of using AI or advanced tooling to accelerate optimization and automate benchmarking workflows
• Ability to collaborate within and across teams and work autonomously in a distributed setting

Required skills

• Java and JVM internals
• Benchmarking tools (JMH, Rally)
• Distributed systems design
• Bonus: native libraries (C++, Rust, SIMD), storage engine performance, vector search, and performance SLAs

What we offer

• Base salary of EUR 87,300 to 138,100, with no variable component
• Health coverage for you and your family in many locations
• Flexible locations and schedules for many roles
• Generous vacation days and parental leave of at least 16 weeks
• Volunteer time and a donation matching program