Principal Software Engineer Search Systems

Principal Software Engineer

Do you possess current expertise with Lucene, Elasticsearch, Solr, or similar search engines and are looking to drive search-based technology solutions for us?

Our team is dedicated to unlocking the rich knowledge embedded within Elsevier's content through our rich data platform; this empowers researchers, clinicians, and innovators worldwide to gain new insights, make informed decisions, and accelerate progress across research, healthcare, and life sciences. We lead the ongoing transformation of Elsevier's vast, unstructured information into richly interconnected knowledge graphs that capture the full depth and nuance of scientific meaning. Through our dynamic knowledge discovery platform, we combine graph-powered agentic AI with advanced search technologies to deliver contextually relevant, trustworthy, and precise answers to researchers. As part of the Search team, you'll contribute to the systems and infrastructure that fuel this mission. We focus on building scalable, reliable, and high-performance retrieval systems that accelerate innovation across Elsevier's ecosystem.

The Role

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer with extensive search experience that can design and implement complex search and retrieval systems, mentor team members, and help evolve our central search engineering architecture by collaborating closely with product, platform, and other engineering teams to deliver technical solutions, and high-throughput services with meaningful real-world impact.

Responsibilities

• Leading architectural design and ensure technical consistency.
• Helping lead our shared search platform – expanding content search, improving relevance via vector and lexical search techniques.
• Building world-class search systems to enhance users' search experience.
• Automating processes to assist other teams.
• Collaborating on new ideas to optimize systems and engineering workflows.
• Building relationships with other engineering teams to identify and solve their pain points.
• Working across the stack, from development to infrastructure.
• Designing and developing scalable data processing workflows and microservices using Spark, Spark Streaming, and Airflow.
• Writing clean, modular, and testable code in Python, Java, or Scala, aligned with coding standards and architecture guidelines.
• Lead implementation of system components that span multiple services and modules.
• Diagnose and resolve complex technical issues across distributed systems and data workflows.
• Leading design discussions, code reviews, and architecture sessions to ensure software quality and maintainability.
• Developing and maintain data models to support analytical and operational use cases.
• Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders to translate product requirements into reliable engineering solutions.

What We're Looking For

• Current expertise with Lucene, Elasticsearch, Solr, or any other search engine, and have industry experience with Semantic Search.
• Proven track record building search systems at scale.
• Proficiency in batch processing technologies, including Spark, Spark Streaming, Airflow.
• Expertise in at least one of Java, Python, Scala.
• Deep understanding of distributed system design, data modeling, and performance tuning.
• Experience with test-driven development and CI/CD practices.
• Ability to independently drive technical outcomes from problem definition to deployment.
• Familiarity with Agile, Kanban, or other iterative development methodologies.
• Familiarity with vector/embedding-based search, KNN algorithms.
• Exposure to graph-based data models or knowledge graph architecture.
• Experience building internal platforms or developer-facing data tooling.
• Knowledge of observability best practices for data systems (e.g., metrics, logs, alerts).

U.S. National Base Pay Range: $115,400 - $192,300. Geographic differentials may apply in some locations to better reflect local market rates.

We know your well-being and happiness are key to a long and successful career. We are delighted to offer country specific benefits. Click here to access benefits specific to your location.

We are committed to providing a fair and accessible hiring process. If you have a disability or other need that requires accommodation or adjustment, please let us know by completing our Applicant Request Support Form or please contact View phone number on click.appcast.io.

Criminals may pose as recruiters asking for money or personal information. We never request money or banking details from job applicants. Learn more about spotting and avoiding scams here.

Please read our Candidate Privacy Policy.

We are an equal opportunity employer: qualified applicants are considered for and treated during employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship status, disability status, protected veteran status, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law.

USA Job Seekers:

EEO Know Your Rights.