Principal Vector Search Engineer — Lead Next-Gen Vector DB

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

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Health coverage

Flexible locations and schedules

Generous vacation days

Charitable donation matching up to $2,

Volunteer hours

Parental leave (16 weeks)

Job summary

Elastic is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to advance vector similarity search within Elasticsearch, focusing on designing and implementing new features, improving existing capabilities, and solving complex bugs. You’ll join a globally distributed team, collaborate across continents, and contribute to a robust, scalable search platform.

You will write idiomatic Java, work with vector databases and related algorithms, and help shape the future of AI-powered search for a large user base.

Qualifications

• Experience with vector similarity search and large-scale search platforms.
• Strong Java core skills and knowledge of data structures and concurrency.
• Autonomy to design, implement and own components end-to-end.
• Experience collaborating remotely across teams and open source projects.

Responsibilities

• Lead initiatives to deliver a high-performance vector database feature set.
• Contribute to Elasticsearch with new search features and bug fixes.
• Work with a globally distributed team focused on vector search capabilities.
• Be the go-to expert on vector similarity in Elasticsearch and related APIs.
• Collaborate with community members on issues and pull requests.
• Write modern idiomatic Java code and optimize performance.

Tools

Elasticsearch

Lucene

Java

Vector similarity

Distributed systems

Asynchronous collaboration

Job description

Elastic is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to advance vector similarity search within Elasticsearch, focusing on designing and implementing new features, improving existing capabilities, and solving complex bugs. You’ll join a globally distributed team, collaborate across continents, and contribute to a robust, scalable search platform.

You will write idiomatic Java, work with vector databases and related algorithms, and help shape the future of AI-powered search for a large user base.