Principal Storage Engine Architect (Remote)

Referral Board; United States; On-site; USD 159,800 - 252,800; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Health coverage

Flexible work arrangements

Generous vacation days

Donation matching up to $2,000

Volunteer time up to 40 hours/year

Parental leave (16 weeks)

Job summary

Elastic in the United States seeks a Principal Software Engineer to drive storage engine architecture for Elasticsearch. This globally distributed, fully remote team develops core storage and query technologies for observability workloads and performance optimization.

The role requires a proven track record in high-performance, scalable DB/search tech, strong Java skills, and the ability to lead cross‑org initiatives with AI-assisted development mindset.

Qualifications

• The ideal candidate has a proven track record of designing high-performance, scalable database or search engine technologies.
• You bring a prompt‑engineering mindset to leverage AI agents and validate results.
• You can collaborate across functions and drive decisions in a distributed team.
• You work autonomously with asynchronous, direct, and transparent communication.
• You have implemented techniques to index, store, and query time-series or logs data.
• You have strong Java skills and understanding of concurrency primitives.
• You have experience with data storage tech like Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Prometheus.
• You excel in collaborative environments and communicate effectively.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architectural evolution of core storage engine components and resolve bottlenecks.
• Lead cross-organizational initiatives for observability solutions.
• Collaborate with a globally distributed team focused on logs and metrics.
• Drive operational improvements and enforce clean coding practices.
• Serve as SME across Elasticsearch areas and mentor engineers.
• Triaging and reviewing issues and PRs with domain experts.
• Write idiomatic modern Java (Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java).

Skills

Architectural leadership

AI acceleration

Java concurrency

Cross-functional collaboration

Mentorship

Observability/monitoring

Time-series data techniques

Distributed systems

Code review

Tools

Elasticsearch

Solr

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

Prometheus

Job description

Elastic in the United States seeks a Principal Software Engineer to drive storage engine architecture for Elasticsearch. This globally distributed, fully remote team develops core storage and query technologies for observability workloads and performance optimization.

The role requires a proven track record in high-performance, scalable DB/search tech, strong Java skills, and the ability to lead cross‑org initiatives with AI-assisted development mindset.