Principal Vector Search Engineer - Remote & Async

Elastic; Norway; On-site; NOK 950,000 - 1,502,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Health coverage

Flexible schedules / locations

Generous vacation days

Donation matching

Volunteer hours

Parental leave

Job summary

Elastic is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Search team. You will advance vector similarity search, designing and implementing new features and improving existing capabilities for a robust, fast vector database experience.

You will work with a globally distributed team of engineers, collaborating across continents via email, GitHub, Zoom, and Slack. The role emphasizes autonomy, impactful decisions, and a strong Java focus in a distributed environment.

Qualifications

• Implemented novel techniques in vector similarity on a search platform with a large user base.
• Professional experience with vector similarity and vector databases; used HNSW, IVF, or other relevant algorithms.
• Strong skills in core Java and knowledge of data structures and concurrency; familiar with lambdas.
• Autonomy to own projects end-to-end, including technical design and collaboration with engineers.
• Collaborative development with asynchronous collaboration over the internet is valued.
• Experience with Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Cassandra and understanding of their workings.
• Excellent verbal and written communication; collaborative online work culture.
• Proven track record of using AI to accelerate development and optimize code.
• Ability to work across functions and transition between projects in a distributed team.

Responsibilities

• Lead initiatives within Elasticsearch to produce an industry-leading vector database offering, supplying unparalleled speed and relevance in search.
• Contribute to Elasticsearch full time, building new search features and fixing intriguing bugs, inventing algorithms or data structures when needed.
• Work with a globally distributed team focused on vector search capabilities of Elasticsearch.
• Be an expert on how Elasticsearch implements vector similarity for search relevance and drive improvements.
• Collaborate with community members on issues and pull requests, triaging and handing off as needed.
• Write idiomatic modern Java — Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java!

Skills

Java

Vector similarity

Distributed teamwork

Async collaboration

Data structures

Concurrency

Open source collaboration

Tools

Elasticsearch

Lucene

HNSW

IVF

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

Cassandra

GitHub

Job description

Elastic is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Search team. You will advance vector similarity search, designing and implementing new features and improving existing capabilities for a robust, fast vector database experience.

You will work with a globally distributed team of engineers, collaborating across continents via email, GitHub, Zoom, and Slack. The role emphasizes autonomy, impactful decisions, and a strong Java focus in a distributed environment.