Senior Software Engineer - Storage Engine - Elasticsearch

About the role

Elastic is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join its globally distributed, fully remote Elasticsearch Storage Engine team. The engineer designs, implements and optimizes Elasticsearch's core storage and query engine, focusing on storage efficiency, ES|QL query processing and performance, and data layouts for object storage. The team works on observability workloads and collaborates across continents.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the architectural evolution of core storage engine components, finding and fixing performance bottlenecks in indexing layouts, serialization formats and resource use.
• Lead cross-organizational initiatives to build industry-leading observability solutions.
• Work with a globally distributed team focused on Elasticsearch's logs and metrics capabilities.
• Promote clean coding standards, clarify complex system behavior and bring architectural clarity across the platform.
• Act as a subject matter expert and mentor to the wider engineering organization.
• Help triage, resolve and review issues and pull requests with the global community.

Required profile

• Experience building high-performance, scalable database, search or distributed systems, with a focus on storage, indexing, query execution and performance.
• Proven track record of using AI to speed up development, debug complex systems and optimize code, with a prompt-engineering mindset.
• Implemented techniques to efficiently index, store and query time-series or log data.
• Experience with data storage technologies such as Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB or Prometheus.
• Strong core Java skills, deep understanding of concurrency primitives, and ability to design efficient data structures and algorithms.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills in a distributed team.

Required skills

• Java (Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java)
• Data storage technologies: Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Prometheus
• Bonus: experience with Elasticsearch, open source workflows, CI, and cross-functional initiative leadership

What we offer

• Base salary only, with no variable component; typical range €85,600 to €135,500.
• 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.
• Volunteer time and a company match for donations.