Principal Software Engineer - Search Infra - Elasticsearch

Elastic, the Search AI Company, enables everyone to find the answers they need in real time, using all their data, at scale — unleashing the potential of businesses and people. The Elastic Search AI Platform brings together the precision of search and the intelligence of AI to help organizations deliver on the promise of AI.

What is The Role:

We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Search Infra team. This globally-distributed team of experienced engineers focuses on delivering a robust and feature-rich search experience, including contributing to improving the search experience in Lucene. This is a principal software engineering role that entails using your vast knowledge in this space in order to define, direct, and build the next generation of Elasticsearch capabilities. This role provides technical vision and direction for Elasticsearch’s core search infrastructure, including indexing, retrieval, and relevance, and requires deep expertise in search internals and cross-team collaboration.

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.

What You Will Be Doing:

• As a full-time Elasticsearch contributor, define, lead, and contribute to the evolution of core search and indexing capabilities.
• Research advances in search infrastructure, data structures, and retrieval algorithms to build efficient foundations for users.
• Work closely with partners and product teams to understand needs and help shape the long-term technical vision for search at Elastic.
• Drive an innovative roadmap for Elasticsearch’s indexing, query execution, and relevance layers.
• Act as an authority in several areas of Elasticsearch, continuously improving them through insights and instincts.

What You Will Bring:

• Experience leading technical projects in the search infrastructure and distributed systems space, building sophisticated search platforms.
• Experience mentoring expert engineers, providing both technical and professional guidance.
• Experience defining a long-term technical vision for a core search or retrieval system across teams.
• Hands-on experience with search and indexing technologies such as Elasticsearch, Lucene, or Solr.
• Strong skills in core Java, familiarity with advanced data structures, concurrency constructs, and modern language features.
• Ability to work with a high level of autonomy, guiding projects from concept to completion.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with a supportive and empathetic approach to collaboration.

Bonus Points

• Prior experience building with Elasticsearch and deep understanding of information retrieval theory.
• Experience working with open-source projects, source control workflows, and continuous integration.