Principal Vector Search Engineer — Flexible Location

Elasticsearch B.V.; Ireland; On-site; EUR 103,000 - 163,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Health coverage

Flexible locations and schedules

Generous vacation days

Donation matching

Volunteer hours

Parental leave

Job summary

Elastic, the Search AI Company, seeks a Principal Software Engineer to advance vector similarity search within Elasticsearch. You will lead initiatives to deliver industry-leading vector database features, contribute to core search functionality, and collaborate with a distributed team to improve both speed and relevance of results.

You will design new algorithms or data structures, work near OS/hardware boundaries, and guide projects from concept to deployment while mentoring peers and engaging

Qualifications

• Experience with vector similarity and vector databases at scale.
• Strong Java knowledge and familiarity with standard data structures and concurrency.
• Ability to work autonomously and lead projects end-to-end.
• Experience collaborating asynchronously across the internet is highly valued.
• Experience with Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Cassandra helpful.
• Proven track record using AI to accelerate development and debugging.

Responsibilities

• Lead initiatives to deliver a leading vector database offering with fast, relevant search.
• Build new search features and fix challenging bugs; optimize code readability and maintainability.
• Collaborate with a globally distributed team focused on vector search capabilities.
• Serve as a resolver and mentor on vector similarity implementations for search relevance.
• Engage with community members and manage issues and PRs across time zones.
• Write idiomatic modern Java; align with Elasticsearch architecture practices.

Skills

Vector similarity

Core Java

Asynchronous collaboration

Cross-functional collaboration

Open source collaboration

Tools

Lucene

HNSW

IVF

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

Job description

Elastic, the Search AI Company, seeks a Principal Software Engineer to advance vector similarity search within Elasticsearch. You will lead initiatives to deliver industry-leading vector database features, contribute to core search functionality, and collaborate with a distributed team to improve both speed and relevance of results.

You will design new algorithms or data structures, work near OS/hardware boundaries, and guide projects from concept to deployment while mentoring peers and engaging