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Principal Software Engineer - Search Infra - Elasticsearch

Elastic· Platform - Elasticsearch
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Remote$159.8k - $252.8kfull-timePosted 2mo ago

About the role

Principal software engineering role focusing on core search infrastructure, indexing, retrieval, and relevance for Elasticsearch. Provides technical vision and direction, contributing to Lucene and the next generation of Elasticsearch capabilities with cross-team collaboration in a globally distributed environment.

Responsibilities

  • 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.
  • Collaborate with partners and product teams to shape the long-term technical vision for search at Elastic.
  • Leverage large-scale search systems experience to drive an innovative roadmap for Elasticsearch’s indexing, query execution, and relevance layers.
  • Serve as an authority in several Elasticsearch domains and continuously improve them through insights and expertise.

Qualifications

  • Experience leading technical projects in the search infrastructure and distributed systems space.
  • Proven ability to build and operate sophisticated search platforms and robust, high-performance software systems.
  • Experience mentoring expert engineers, providing technical and professional guidance.
  • Experience defining a long-term technical vision for a core search or retrieval system with cross-team collaboration.
  • Hands-on experience with Elasticsearch, Lucene, or Solr.
  • Strong core Java skills and familiarity with advanced data structures, concurrency, and modern language features like lambdas.
  • Ability to work with autonomy from concept to completion, including technical design and cross-engineer collaboration.
  • Experience with large-scale data or search systems (e.g., Elasticsearch, Lucene, Solr) and understanding of their workings.
  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills; ability to collaborate across distributed teams.

Skills

Required:Technical leadershipMentoringSearch/IR domain knowledgeJava

Benefits

  • Company-matched 401k with dollar-for-dollar matching up to 6% of eligible earnings
  • Stock program eligibility
  • Health coverage for you and your family in many locations
  • Flexible locations and schedules for many roles
  • Generous vacation days
  • Volunteer time allowance (up to 40 hours per year)
  • Parental leave (minimum 16 weeks)
  • Competitive pay based on work performed; no variable compensation component for this role
Last updated Aug 27, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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