Principal Software Engineer - Search Infra - Elasticsearch

Elastic; Polska; On-site; PLN 369,000 - 584,000; Full time

Job summary

Elastic, the Search AI Company, seeks a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Search Infra team. This globally distributed team defines and builds the next generation of Elasticsearch capabilities with deep expertise in indexing, retrieval, and relevance.

You will lead core search infrastructure, collaborate across product teams, mentor engineers, and shape a long-term technical vision. Strong Java, Lucene, and distributed systems experience are essential to drive scalable,

Qualifications

• Experience leading technical projects in the search infrastructure and distributed systems space.
• Proven knowledge in building and operating sophisticated search platforms and engineering robust, high-performance software systems.
• Experience mentoring expert engineers, providing both technical and professional guidance.
• Experience defining a long-term technical vision for a core search or retrieval system, working across teams and organizations to collaboratively shape the technical roadmap.
• Hands-on experience with search and indexing technologies such as Elasticsearch, Lucene, or Solr, strong Java skills and knowledge of data structures and concurrency.
• Desire to optimize and leverage efficient algorithms and search data structures.
• Ability to work autonomously from concept to completion, including technical design and collaboration with other engineers.
• Experience with large-scale data or search systems and distributed storage engines.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, collaboration across distributed teams.

Responsibilities

• As a full-time Elasticsearch contributor, you will define, lead, and contribute to the evolution of core search and indexing capabilities.
• Research advances in search infrastructure, data structures, and retrieval algorithms to ensure robust foundations for users.
• Collaborate with partners and product teams to shape long-term technical vision for search at Elastic.
• Drive an innovative roadmap for Elasticsearch’s indexing, query execution, and relevance layers.
• Serve as an authority in multiple Elasticsearch domains and continuously improve them with your insights.

Skills

Leadership

Distributed systems

Search infrastructure

Mentoring

Java

Elasticstack

Tools

Elasticsearch

Lucene

Solr

Job description

Elastic, the Search AI Company, enables everyone to find the answers they need in real time, using all their data, at scale — unleashing the potential of businesses and people. The Elastic Search AI Platform, used by more than 50% of the Fortune 500, brings together the precision of search and the intelligence of AI to enable everyone to accelerate the results that matter. By taking advantage of all structured and unstructured data — securing and protecting private information more effectively — Elastic’s complete, cloud-based solutions for search, security, and observability help organizations deliver on the promise of AI.

What is The Role:

We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Search Infra team. This globally-distributed team of experienced engineers focuses on delivering a robust and feature-rich search experience, including contributing to improving the search experience in Lucene. This is a principle software engineering role that entails using your vast knowledge in this space in order to define, direct, and build the next generation of Elasticsearch capabilities. This role provides technical vision and direction for Elasticsearch’s core search infrastructure, including indexing, retrieval, and relevance, and requires deep expertise in search internals and cross-team collaboration. Our company is distributed by intention. We hire the best engineers we can find wherever they are, whoever they are. We collaborate across continents every day over email, GitHub, Zoom, and Slack. At our best, we write fast, scalable and intuitive software. We believe that the best way to do that is to empower individual engineers, code review every change, decide big things by consensus, and strive for incremental improvements.

What You Will Be Doing:

• As a full-time Elasticsearch contributor, you will define, lead, and contribute to the evolution of core search and indexing capabilities.
• You’ll research advances in search infrastructure, data structures, and retrieval algorithms to ensure we’re building the most efficient and powerful foundations for our users.
• You’ll work closely with our partners and product teams to understand their needs and help shape the long-term technical vision for search at Elastic.
• You’ll bring your past experience with large-scale search systems to drive an innovative roadmap for Elasticsearch’s indexing, query execution, and relevance layers.
• As an authority in several areas of Elasticsearch, you’ll be the go-to expert for those domains, continuously improving them through your insights and instincts.

What You Will Bring:

• Experience leading technical projects in the search infrastructure and distributed systems space.
• you bring proven knowledge in building and operating sophisticated search platforms and engineering robust, high-performance software systems.
• Experience mentoring expert engineers, providing both technical and professional guidance.
• Experience defining a long-term technical vision for a core search or retrieval system, working across teams and organizations to collaboratively shape the technical roadmap.
• Hands-on experience with search and indexing technologies such as Elasticsearch, Lucene, or Solr, Strong skills in core Java and familiarity with advanced data structures and concurrency constructs, as well as newer language features like lambdas.
• You have a strong desire to optimize and leverage the most efficient algorithms and search data structures.
• Able to work with a high level of autonomy, tackling projects and guiding them from concept to completion, including both technical design and collaboration with other engineers to develop the necessary components.
• Experience with large-scale data or search systems such as Elasticsearch, Lucene, Solr, or distributed storage engines, and an understanding of how they work and why they work that way.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills. Collaborating across distributed teams is challenging, we value being supportive, empathetic, and trusting in all interactions, and we expect the same from everyone on the team.

Bonus Points

• You've built things with Elasticsearch before, and you have experience in the search and information retrieval space and understand the constructs and theory behind it.
• Experience working with open source projects and familiar with different styles of source control workflow and continuous integration.

Compensation

For this role is in the form of base salary. This role does not have a variable compensation component. At Elastic, our compensation philosophy aims to provide fair, competitive and transparent remuneration. Salary ranges are established based on a combination of external market benchmarks, internal pay equity considerations, and the responsibilities and complexity associated with each role. This approach helps ensure consistency across comparable roles while remaining competitive within the relevant labour markets. The typical starting salary range for this role is: 369 400 zł - 584 300 zł PLN

Additional Information - We Take Care of Our People

• As a distributed company, diversity drives our identity. Whether you’re looking to launch a new career or grow an existing one, Elastic is the type of company where you can balance great work with great life.
• Your age is only a number. It doesn’t matter if you’re just out of college or your children are; we need you for what you can do.
• We strive to have parity of benefits across regions and while regulations differ from place to place, we believe taking care of our people is the right thing to do.
• Competitive pay based on the work you do here and not your previous salary Health coverage for you and your family in