Principal Performance Engineer — Distributed Systems

Elasticsearch B.V.; Ireland; Remote; EUR 105,000 - 166,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Health coverage

Flexible locations and schedules

Generous vacation days

Volunteer time

Parental leave

Job summary

Elasticsearch B.V. is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch Performance team.

You will lead architectural and code-level performance initiatives, driving continuous optimization and predictability of Elasticsearch performance across diverse environments. You will own core performance projects from architecture to production, develop models and benchmarking methods, and mentor engineers while collaborating across teams to embed performance thinking in new features.

Qualifications

• Proven experience profiling and optimizing distributed systems.
• Experience with benchmarking tools (flamegraphs, JMH, Rally).
• Solid understanding of distributed systems architecture and scaling.
• Experience using AI tooling to accelerate optimization.
• Collaborate across functions and teams to improve performance.
• Able to transition between projects and codebases as priorities shift.
• Autonomous work style with clear, direct communication.

Responsibilities

• Own core performance initiatives from architecture to production.
• Develop performance models and methodologies for distributed systems.
• Drive optimization strategies to keep Elasticsearch scalable and predictable.
• Profile system behavior to identify bottlenecks in logging, metrics, and vector search.
• Ensure robust benchmarks and regression detection for serverless and stateful apps.
• Mentor engineers and promote a performance-first culture.
• Build AI-assisted optimization tools to streamline profiling and benchmarking.
• Collaborate across teams to embed performance considerations in new features.

Skills

Java/JVM performance

Concurrency concepts

Profiling & benchmarking

Distributed systems

AI-assisted optimization

Cross-functional collaboration

Autonomous work style

Tools

Flamegraphs

JMH

Rally

Profiling tools

Job description

Elasticsearch B.V. is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch Performance team.

You will lead architectural and code-level performance initiatives, driving continuous optimization and predictability of Elasticsearch performance across diverse environments. You will own core performance projects from architecture to production, develop models and benchmarking methods, and mentor engineers while collaborating across teams to embed performance thinking in new features.