Principal Software Developer - Performance Tuning - Elasticsearch

About the Role

Elasticsearch powers search, observability, and AI retrieval (RAG) for the world's largest organizations. We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch Performance team. In this role, you will lead architectural and code-level performance engineering initiatives to drive the continuous optimization and predictability of Elasticsearch.

What You Will Be Doing

• Architectural Leadership: Own core performance engineering initiatives from architecture to production, leading technical design and execution for high-impact optimizations.
• Performance Modeling: Develop foundational performance models and methodologies for complex, distributed systems.
• Optimization Strategy: Drive strategies to ensure Elasticsearch remains performant, predictable, and scalable across diverse environments.
• System Analysis: Profile and analyze system behavior to identify bottlenecks in logging, metrics, vector search, and ES|QL.
• Benchmarking: Ensure robust performance benchmarks and regression detection for both stateful and stateless (Serverless) architectures.
• Automation: Design and build AI-assisted optimization harnesses to streamline profiling, hypothesis testing, and benchmarking.
• Mentorship: Coach other engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and performance-aware development.

What You Bring

• Java Expertise: Deep knowledge of Java internals, JVM memory management, and concurrency models. Ability to write high-performance, thread-safe, and lock-free code.
• Distributed Systems: Proven experience in profiling and optimizing distributed systems, including partition tolerance and cluster state propagation.
• Tooling: Deep experience with benchmarking tools such as flamegraphs, JMH, and Rally.
• AI Integration: Track record of using AI or advanced tooling to accelerate optimization and automate benchmarking workflows.
• Collaboration: Ability to act as a force multiplier, collaborating across functions and teams to embed performance-first thinking.
• Autonomy: Ability to drive decisions and results in a distributed team environment using asynchronous communication.

Bonus Points

• Experience integrating high-performance native libraries (C++, Rust, SIMD) into Java applications.
• Deep knowledge of modern storage engine performance, index modes, or vector search optimizations.
• Experience defining and managing Performance SLAs for distributed systems.
• Background in the internals of large-scale data stores or search engines.