Elasticsearch - Senior Java Engineer - Performance Tuning (JDK, Lucene)

Referral Board; United States; Remote; USD 133,000 - 211,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology company is seeking a Senior Java Engineer to join their Elasticsearch team in the United States. The role focuses on enhancing performance at the code level, collaborating across teams to design effective solutions. Ideal candidates will have strong Java skills and experience in algorithms, optimization, and leading large projects. The position offers a competitive salary range of $133,100 - $210,600 USD, along with benefits promoting diversity and work-life balance.

Benefits

Health coverage for family

Flexible locations and schedules

Generous vacation days

Parental leave of at least 16 weeks

Qualifications

• Experience profiling and applying optimizations to code.
• Proficient in algorithms and data structures.
• Experience crafting APIs and understanding trade-offs.

Responsibilities

• Shaping how Elasticsearch runs in Elastic Cloud.
• Optimizing low-level code for performance.
• Solving difficult problems with concurrency.

Skills

Profiling and applying optimizations to code

Algorithms and data structures

Crafting APIs

Low-level Java knowledge

Leading large scale projects

Problem-solving

Tools

Java Microbenchmark Harness (JMH)

Java Panama APIs

Job description

Elasticsearch - Senior Java Engineer - Performance Tuning (JDK, Lucene)

United States

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 are on the lookout for a Senior/Principal Java Engineer to join our Elasticsearch team. This role specializes in deep, low-level performance engineering at the Elasticsearch code level and lower (Lucene, JDK). The focus of the role will rotate across different areas, such as logging, metrics, vector search, and ES|QL, partnering with existing area-specific teams to maximize the performance of their features.

Our company is distributed by intention. We hire the best engineers we can find wherever they are, whoever they are. As a result, our team is diverse and distributed across continents. We collaborate every day over email, GitHub, Zoom, and Slack. Effective written communication skills are important.

At our best, we write fast, scalable, and intuitive software. We believe that the best way to do that is to code review for every change, decide big things by consensus, and strive for incremental improvements. We believe the team should be aware of how our customers (both technical and non-technical) use our products and be empowered to make bold and impactful decisions.

You will be a strong individual contributor on the team but you will also contribute to and lead cross team projects. We need someone who has great design skills, who can work at a low level of abstraction but can equally communicate technical concepts across a variety of collaborators.

What You Will Be Doing

• Shaping how Elasticsearch runs in Elastic Cloud
• Optimizing low-level code to improve speed, efficiency, and scalability across Elasticsearch.
• Solving difficult problems, involving data structures and concurrency, and driving solutions.
• Partnering with area teams to co-design, profile, and tune features.
• Collaborating in the open with the ES team, Elastic users, and other supporting open source projects
• Share best practices and tools to strengthen long-term performance culture.
• Supporting our support engineers with the harder problems

What You Bring

• Experience profiling and applying optimizations to code
• Proficient in algorithms and data structures
• Experience crafting APIs and the ability to reason through tradeoffs
• Knowledge of low-level Java such as concurrency, parallelism, classloaders, etc.
• Experience leading large scale projects across engineering teams
• Willingness to dive into new issues and ask for help when you need it

Bonus Points

• Experience with JMH (Java Microbenchmark Harness)
• Hands-on use of recent Java Panama APIs, or JNI

Compensation for this role is in the form of base salary. This role does not have a variable compensation component.

The typical starting salary range for new hires in this role is listed below. In select locations (including Seattle WA, Los Angeles CA, the San Francisco Bay Area CA, and the New York City Metro Area), an alternate range may apply as specified below.

These ranges represent the lowest to highest salary we reasonably and in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range, and the ranges may be modified in the future.

An employee's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, performance, and business or organizational needs.

Elastic believes that employees should have the opportunity to share in the value that we create together for our shareholders. Therefore, in addition to cash compensation, this role is currently eligible to participate in Elastic's stock program. Our total rewards package also includes a company-matched 401k with dollar-for-dollar matching up to 6% of eligible earnings, along with a range of other benefits offered with a holistic emphasis on employee well-being.

The typical starting salary range for this role is:

$133,100 - $210,600 USD

The typical starting salary range for this role in the select locations listed above is:

$159,900 - $252,900 USD

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 many locations
• Ability to craft your calendar with flexible locations and schedules for many roles
• Generous number of vacation days each year
• Increase your impact - We match up to $2000 (or local currency equivalent) for financial donations and service
• Up to 40 hours each year to use toward volunteer projects you love
• Embracing parenthood with minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave

Elastic is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or perception, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other basis protected by law.

We welcome individuals with disabilities and strive to create an accessible and inclusive experience for all individuals. To request an accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please email [e-mail]. We will reply to your request within 24 business hours of submission.

Elastic develops and distributes encryption software and technology that is subject to U.S. export controls and licensing requirements for individuals who are located in or are nationals of certain sanctioned countries and regions. If you are located in or are a national of a listed country or region, an export license may be required as a condition of employment in this role. Please note that national origin and/or nationality do not affect eligibility for employment with Elastic.

Please see our Privacy Statement for more information.