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Principal Java Developer - Distributed Systems, Serverless - Elasticsearch

Elastic· Platform - Elasticsearch
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Hybrid (Canada)CA$128.3k - CA$203kFull-timePosted 4mo ago

About the role

Principal Software Engineer focused on scale, performance, and resilience of Elasticsearch, particularly in the Serverless offering. Tackles deep distributed systems challenges around node communication, data indexing, allocation, and management across nodes.

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and operate core pieces of the next-generation Serverless Elasticsearch offering to improve scale, performance, and reliability
  • Improve Elasticsearch components that support concurrent and consistent indexing across multiple machines
  • Maintain cluster coordination to sustain high performance as nodes join/leave and data moves around, preserving safety and liveness
  • Push the limits on the number of shards, nodes, and petabytes handled today
  • Investigate performance or concurrency issues and propose solutions
  • Support support engineers with harder problems
  • Own operational investigations end-to-end until performance or stability issues are resolved

Qualifications

  • Deep background in distributed systems and consensus algorithms
  • Strong skills in core Java and familiarity with data structures, concurrency constructs, and newer language features
  • Deep technical proficiency in algorithms
  • Experience building large-scale distributed systems (not just using off-the-shelf services)
  • Experience building and debugging complex features with broad impact running on multiple machines
  • Ability to own projects end-to-end (technical design and cross-team collaboration)
  • Experience managing projects involving multiple engineers
  • Proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debugging, and optimization while owning outcomes
  • Ability to collaborate across functions and transition between projects/codebases/teams based on priorities
  • Ability to work autonomously, drive decisions and results in a distributed team via asynchronous, direct, transparent communication

Skills

Required:Distributed systemsJavaAlgorithmsDistributed systems design

Benefits

  • Stock program eligibility
  • RRSP with dollar-for-dollar matching up to 6% of eligible earnings
  • Company-wide benefits focused on well-being
  • Competitive pay
  • Flexible locations and schedules
  • Generous vacation days
  • Volunteer time allowance (up to 40 hours/year)
  • Parental leave (minimum 16 weeks)
Last updated Sep 17, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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