Principal Software Engineer - Relevance in ES|QL - Elasticsearch

Role Description

We're looking for a Principal Software Developer to join the Elasticsearch - Search team. This globally-distributed team of expert engineers focuses on delivering a robust and feature-rich search experience, including contributing to improving the search experience in Lucene.

This technical leader is responsible for contributing to the technical direction and vision for our search capabilities, including:

• Design and implementation of new search features
• Enhancements to search functionality
• Resolving bugs

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.

Qualifications

• Professional experience with search and vector databases, using HNSW, IVF, or other relevant algorithms and libraries on search platforms at scale.
• Solid skills in core Java and familiarity with the standard library of data structures and concurrency constructs, as well as features like lambdas.
• Ability to work with a high level of autonomy, guiding projects from beginning to end, covering both technical design and collaboration with other engineers.
• Comfortable developing collaboratively, giving and receiving feedback on code, approaches, and APIs.
• Experience with various data storage technologies like Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Cassandra.
• Proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code.
• Ability to collaborate across functions and teams, transitioning between different projects, codebases, or teams based on business priorities.
• Experience driving decisions and results in a distributed team through asynchronous, direct, and transparent communication.

Requirements

• Experience building with Elasticsearch.
• Familiarity with open source projects and different styles of source control workflow and continuous integration.
• Experience with data storage technology.
• Experience designing, leading, and owning cross-functional initiatives.

Benefits

• 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.
• 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.
• Minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave.