Principal Software Engineer – Elasticsearch Search & AI

Socket.dev; Spain (TX); On-site; USD 93,000 - 147,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Flexible locations and schedules

Generous vacation days

Donation matching

Volunteer hours

Parental leave

Job summary

Elastic is seeking a Principal Software Developer for the Elasticsearch - Search team. The role focuses on delivering fast, relevant search and contributing to Lucene improvements. You will shape technical direction, design new features, and resolve complex bugs in a distributed environment.

You will work with a global team on vector search capabilities, be an expert on search relevance, and write idiomatic Java. Collaboration across time zones and open-source practices are valued.

Qualifications

• Experience with search and vector databases at scale.
• Solid core Java skills and familiarity with common data structures and concurrency primitives.
• Ability to work autonomously on end-to-end projects including design and collaboration with engineers.
• Experience collaborating across the internet (asynchronous preferred) and contributing to open source projects is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead initiatives within Elasticsearch to deliver a leading search engine with speed and relevance.
• Develop new search features, fix bugs, and optimize algorithms or data structures.
• Collaborate with a globally distributed team focusing on vector search capabilities.
• Champion search relevance improvements based on data and instincts.

Skills

Java

Vector search

Distributed teamwork

Asynchronous communication

AI acceleration

Tools

Elasticsearch

Solr

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

Cassandra

Job description

Elastic is seeking a Principal Software Developer for the Elasticsearch - Search team. The role focuses on delivering fast, relevant search and contributing to Lucene improvements. You will shape technical direction, design new features, and resolve complex bugs in a distributed environment.

You will work with a global team on vector search capabilities, be an expert on search relevance, and write idiomatic Java. Collaboration across time zones and open-source practices are valued.