Principal Software Engineer - Performance & AI Optimization

Socket.dev; Norway; Hybrid; NOK 950,000 - 1,502,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Health coverage

Flexible locations/schedules

Vacation days

Donation matching

Volunteer hours

Parental leave

Job summary

Elastic's Elasticsearch Performance team seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead architectural and code-level performance initiatives, driving optimizations across distributed systems. You will own core performance programs from design to production, profiling bottlenecks and enabling scalable improvements.

You will mentor engineers, build AI-assisted optimization tools, and collaborate across functions to embed performance-first thinking in new features.

Qualifications

• Deep knowledge of Java internals and JVM memory management.
• Experience profiling distributed systems with benchmarking tools.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems architecture and scaling.
• Proven track record using AI tooling to accelerate optimization.
• Ability to collaborate across functions and drive large projects.

Responsibilities

• Own core performance initiatives from architecture to production.
• Lead design, plan, and execution for major performance improvements.
• Develop performance models for complex distributed systems.
• Profile and optimize logging, metrics, vector search, and ES|QL.
• Ensure robust benchmarks and regression detection for stateful/stateless.
• Embed performance-first thinking into new features from day one.
• Mentor engineers and foster performance-aware development.

Skills

Java & JVM internals

Distributed systems

Performance profiling

AI tooling for optimization

Collaboration across teams

Autonomous work style

Tools

JMH

Rally

Flamegraphs

Job description

Elastic's Elasticsearch Performance team seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead architectural and code-level performance initiatives, driving optimizations across distributed systems. You will own core performance programs from design to production, profiling bottlenecks and enabling scalable improvements.

You will mentor engineers, build AI-assisted optimization tools, and collaborate across functions to embed performance-first thinking in new features.