Principal Software Engineer (Search Infrastructure - Elasticsearch)

Elastic; Greater London; Remote; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage for family

Flexible location

Generous vacation days

Parental leave

Volunteer time off

Charitable matching

Job summary

Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Elasticsearch - Search Infra team. You will define, direct, and build the next generation of Elasticsearch capabilities, focusing on indexing, retrieval, and relevance while collaborating across teams.

Bring deep expertise in search internals, guide the roadmap, mentor engineers, and drive high-performance systems at scale.

Qualifications

• Proven leadership on technical projects in search infrastructure.
• Deep expertise in Elasticsearch/Lucene-like ecosystems.
• Mentor engineers and guide technical direction across teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and lead the evolution of core search and indexing capabilities.
• Research advances in search infrastructure and data structures.
• Shape long-term technical vision for Elasticsearch core search and retrieval.
• Collaborate with product teams and partners to align roadmaps.

Skills

Java

Search infra

Distributed systems

Mentoring

Cross-team collaboration

Open source

Data structures

Concurrency

Tools

Elasticsearch

Lucene

Solr

Git

CI/CD

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 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 systemsExperience mentoring expert engineers, providing both technical and professional guidanceExperience 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 wayStrong 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 structuresExcellent 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 teamAble 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 componentsExperience defining a long-term technical vision for a core search or retrieval system, working across teams and organizations to collaboratively shape the technical roadmapHands-on experience with search and indexing technologies such as Elasticsearch, Lucene, or SolrYou’ve built things with Elasticsearch before, and you have experience in the search and information retrieval space and understand the constructs and theory behind itExperience working with open source projects and familiar with different styles of source control workflow and continuous integration