Lead Java Engineer — Distributed Systems (Serverless)

Referral Board; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Referral Board is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Elasticsearch – Distributed Systems team in the United States. You will tackle deep distributed systems challenges, focusing on scale, performance, and resilience within our Serverless offering.

You will design, build, and operate core pieces, improve concurrent indexing, and maintain cluster coordination. You’ll own projects end-to-end and mentor others while advancing AI-assisted development.

Qualifications

• Deep background in distributed systems and consensus algorithms.
• Strong skills in core Java and standard data structures and concurrency concepts.
• Experience building large-scale distributed systems with multi-machine deployments.
• Ability to own projects end-to-end and collaborate across teams.
• Proven track record of using AI to accelerate development and debugging.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate core pieces of a serverless Elasticsearch offering.
• Improve components for concurrent and consistent indexing across machines.
• Maintain cluster coordination to preserve performance as nodes join/leave.
• Push limits on shards, nodes, and petabytes handled by Elasticsearch.
• Investigate performance or concurrency issues and propose solutions.
• Support engineers with complex problems and own end-to-end investigations.

Skills

Distributed systems

Consensus algorithms

Java

Data structures

Concurrency

Algorithms

Project ownership

Cross-functional collaboration

AI in development

Tools

Netty

JDK

Job description

Referral Board is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Elasticsearch – Distributed Systems team in the United States. You will tackle deep distributed systems challenges, focusing on scale, performance, and resilience within our Serverless offering.

You will design, build, and operate core pieces, improve concurrent indexing, and maintain cluster coordination. You’ll own projects end-to-end and mentor others while advancing AI-assisted development.