Principal Software Engineer - Core Search Infra

Elastic; España; Remote; EUR 80,000 - 127,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Health coverage

Flexible schedules

Vacation days

Donation matching

Volunteer hours

Parental leave

Job summary

Elastic is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Search Infra team. This globally distributed role involves defining, directing, and building the next generation of Elasticsearch capabilities, with a focus on core search infrastructure including indexing, retrieval, and relevance.

You will influence the technical roadmap, research retrieval algorithms, and collaborate across continents to deliver scalable search.

Qualifications

• Experience leading technical projects in the search infrastructure and distributed systems space.
• Experience mentoring expert engineers, providing both technical and professional guidance.
• Experience defining a long-term technical vision for a core search or retrieval system, working across teams to shape the 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 and concurrency constructs, plus modern features like lambdas.
• Autonomy to drive projects from concept to completion with collaboration across engineers.
• Experience with large-scale data or search systems like Elasticsearch, Lucene, Solr, or distributed storage engines.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills for distributed teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and lead the evolution of core search and indexing capabilities.
• Research advances in search infrastructure, data structures, and retrieval algorithms.
• Collaborate with partners and product teams to shape long-term technical vision for search at Elastic.
• Drive an innovative roadmap for Elasticsearch’s indexing, query execution, and relevance layers.
• Be the go-to expert in your domains and continuously improve them.

Skills

Technical leadership

Mentoring

Roadmap planning

Distributed systems

Search algorithms

Java

Communication

Elasticsearch

Lucene

Solr

Tools

Elasticsearch

Lucene

Solr

Job description

Elastic is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Search Infra team. This globally distributed role involves defining, directing, and building the next generation of Elasticsearch capabilities, with a focus on core search infrastructure including indexing, retrieval, and relevance.

You will influence the technical roadmap, research retrieval algorithms, and collaborate across continents to deliver scalable search.