Senior Software Engineer - Search Algorithms - Elasticsearch

About the Role

Elastic is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join the globally-distributed Elasticsearch Search Relevance team. You will contribute to the technical direction and vision of our search capabilities, focusing on delivering a robust, feature-rich search experience, including contributions to Apache Lucene.

What You Will Be Doing

• Lead Initiatives: Drive the development of an industry-leading search engine offering, focusing on speed and relevance.
• Core Development: Contribute to Elasticsearch full-time, building new features, resolving complex bugs, and optimizing algorithms or data structures.
• Technical Expertise: Act as an expert on search relevance, identifying and driving improvements based on data and technical intuition.
• Collaboration: Work with a distributed team on vector search capabilities and engage with the global open-source community on issues and pull requests.
• Modern Java: Write idiomatic, modern Java (Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java).

What You Bring

• Search Expertise: Professional experience with search or vector databases, including HNSW, IVF, or similar algorithms at scale.
• Java Proficiency: Solid skills in core Java, including standard library data structures, concurrency, and modern features.
• Autonomy: Ability to drive projects from technical design to implementation in a distributed environment.
• Collaborative Mindset: Experience with collaborative code review and asynchronous communication.
• System Knowledge: Familiarity with data storage technologies (e.g., PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra) and their underlying mechanics.
• AI Integration: Proven track record of using AI to accelerate development and optimize complex systems.

Benefits

• Competitive pay based on role responsibilities.
• Flexible locations and schedules.
• Health coverage for you and your family.
• Generous annual vacation policy.
• Financial matching for donations and service.
• Up to 40 hours of volunteer time off per year.
• Minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave.