Principal Software Engineer (Search Infrastructure, Elasticsearch)

Elastic; Madrid; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully paid health coverage for you and

Flexible location and schedule

Generous vacation days

16 weeks parental leave

40 hours volunteering per year

Charitable giving match up to 1500 USD

Job summary

Elastic is hiring a Principal Software Engineer to shape the next generation of Elasticsearch capabilities. You will define technical direction for core search infrastructure, including indexing, retrieval, and relevance, collaborating across teams to deliver scalable solutions.

You’ll work with partners and product teams to translate needs into an innovative roadmap, mentor engineers, and lead end-to-end projects from concept to completion in a distributed, globally distributed team.

Qualifications

• Experience defining a long-term technical vision for core search infrastructure.
• Excellent verbal and written communication across distributed teams.
• Experience with large-scale search systems: Elasticsearch, Lucene, or Solr.
• Hands-on with search and indexing tech (Elasticsearch, Lucene, Solr).
• Autonomy to lead projects end-to-end with cross-team collaboration.
• Proven experience leading technical projects in search infrastructure.
• Mentoring expert engineers and providing guidance.
• Strong core Java skills and familiarity with data structures and concurrency.
• Experience with open source projects and CI workflows.
• Previous Elasticsearch experience and knowledge of IR theory.

Responsibilities

• Define, lead, and contribute to the evolution of core search and indexing capabilities.
• Search infrastructure research: data structures and retrieval algorithms.
• Collaborate with partners and product teams to shape long-term technical vision.
• Drive roadmap for Elasticsearch’s indexing, query execution, and relevance.
• Be the go-to expert in Elasticsearch domains and share insights.

Skills

Technical vision

Communication

Large-scale search

Elasticsearch/Lucene

Autonomy

Project leadership

Mentoring

Java

Open source

IR theory

Tools

Elasticsearch

Lucene

Solr

Job description

• We’re looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Search Infra team. This globally-distributed team of experienced engineers focuses on delivering a robust and feature-rich search experience, including contributing to improving the search experience in Lucene
• This is a principal software engineering role that entails using your vast knowledge in this space in order to define, direct, and build the next generation of Elasticsearch capabilities
• 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
• Our company is distributed by intention. We hire the best engineers we can find wherever they are, whoever they are. We collaborate across continents every day over email, GitHub, Zoom, and Slack. At our best, we write fast, scalable and intuitive software. We believe that the best way to do that is to empower individual engineers, code review every change, decide big things 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’ll research advances in search infrastructure, data structures, and retrieval algorithms to ensure we’re building the most efficient and powerful foundations for our users
• You’ll work closely with our partners and product teams to understand their needs and help shape the long-term technical vision for search at Elastic. You’ll bring your past 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 areas of Elasticsearch, you’ll be the go-to expert for those domains, continuously improving them through your insights and instincts

Benefits

• Toast to your health: Fully paid health coverage for you and your family, in many locations.
• Craft your calendar: Flexible location and schedule for most roles.
• Create space for you: Distributed by design workforce, plus generous number of vacation days each year.
• Embrace parenthood: Minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave, plus generous family formation benefits.
• Give back your time: 40 hours each year to use toward volunteering with organizations and causes you’re passionate about.
• Amplify your impact: Double your charitable giving — we match donations up to $1500 USD (or local currency equivalent).

• Experience defining a long-term technical vision for a core search or retrieval system, working across teams and organizations to collaboratively shape the technical roadmap
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills. Collaborating across distributed teams is challenging, we value being supportive, empathetic, and trusting in all interactions, and we expect the same from everyone on the team
• Experience with large-scale data or search systems such as Elasticsearch, Lucene, Solr, or distributed storage engines, and an understanding of how they work and why they work that way
• Hands-on experience with search and indexing technologies such as Elasticsearch, Lucene, or Solr
• Able to work with a high level of autonomy, tackling projects and guiding them from concept to completion, including both technical design and collaboration with other engineers to develop the necessary components
• Experience leading technical projects in the search infrastructure and distributed systems space. You bring proven knowledge in building and operating sophisticated search platforms and engineering robust, high-performance software systems
• Experience mentoring expert engineers, providing both technical and professional guidance
• Strong skills in core Java and familiarity with advanced data structures and concurrency constructs, as well as newer language features like lambdas. You have a strong desire to optimize and leverage the most efficient algorithms and search data structures
• You’ve built things with Elasticsearch before, and you have experience in the search and information retrieval space and understand the constructs and theory behind it
• Experience working with open source projects and familiar with different styles of source control workflow and continuous integration