Principal Performance Engineer, Distributed Systems

Socket.dev; Ireland; Hybrid; EUR 105,000 - 166,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Flexible locations and schedules

Generous vacation days

Donation matching

Job summary

Elastic is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch Performance team in Ireland. You will lead architectural and code-level performance initiatives, driving optimizations across distributed systems and scalable architectures.

You will mentor engineers and embed performance-focused thinking across the organization. You will profile, benchmark, and optimize components like logging, metrics, vector search, and ES|QL, leveraging AI-assisted methods to accelerate the process

Qualifications

• Deep knowledge of Java internals and JVM memory management.
• Experience profiling distributed systems and benchmarking tools.
• Understanding of distributed architectures and scaling challenges.
• Experience using AI tools to speed up optimization and benchmarking.
• Ability to collaborate across functions and drive performance initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Own core performance initiatives from architecture to production, delivering high-impact optimizations.
• Develop performance models for complex distributed systems.
• Drive strategies to keep Elasticsearch performant, predictable, and scalable.
• Profile system behavior to identify bottlenecks in logging, metrics, vector search, and ES|QL.
• Ensure robust benchmarks and regression detection for stateful and serverless setups.
• Collaborate across teams to embed performance-first thinking in new features.
• Drive AI-assisted optimization harnesses to streamline profiling and benchmarking.
• Mentor engineers and foster a culture of performance excellence.

Skills

Java internals

JVM memory management

Distributed systems profiling

AI-assisted optimization

Benchmarking

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Flamegraphs

JMH

Rally

Job description

Elastic is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch Performance team in Ireland. You will lead architectural and code-level performance initiatives, driving optimizations across distributed systems and scalable architectures.

You will mentor engineers and embed performance-focused thinking across the organization. You will profile, benchmark, and optimize components like logging, metrics, vector search, and ES|QL, leveraging AI-assisted methods to accelerate the process