Principal Software Developer - Storage Engine - Elasticsearch

About the Role

Elastic is seeking a Principal Software Developer to join our globally distributed, fully remote Elasticsearch - Storage Engine team. You will drive the technical vision, architecture, and design of core storage and query technologies, focusing on observability workloads, storage efficiency, and ES|QL performance.

What You Will Be Doing

• Architectural Leadership: Lead the evolution of core storage engine components, resolving performance bottlenecks in indexing, serialization, and resource utilization.
• Strategic Initiatives: Drive cross-organizational initiatives to build industry-leading observability solutions.
• Technical Mentorship: Act as a subject matter expert (SME) and trusted advisor to the wider engineering organization.
• System Optimization: Introduce best practices for clean coding and architectural clarity.
• Hands-on Development: Write idiomatic modern Java and collaborate on pull requests within a global community.

What You Bring

• Technical Expertise: Strong core Java skills, deep understanding of concurrency, and experience designing efficient data structures and algorithms.
• Domain Knowledge: Proven experience with data storage technologies (e.g., Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Prometheus).
• Distributed Collaboration: Ability to drive decisions autonomously in a distributed team using asynchronous communication.
• AI Proficiency: A prompt-engineering mindset with a track record of using AI to accelerate development and debug complex systems.
• Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills with a focus on empathy and professionalism.

Benefits & Perks

• Competitive salary with stock program eligibility.
• Company-matched RRSP (up to 6% of eligible earnings).
• Flexible locations and schedules.
• Generous annual vacation time.
• Comprehensive health coverage for you and your family.
• Volunteer time off (up to 40 hours/year) and donation matching.
• Minimum 16 weeks of parental leave.