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Senior Software Engineer - Vector Search - Elasticsearch

Elastic· Platform - Elasticsearch
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full-timePosted 1mo ago

About the role

Senior Software Engineer on the Elasticsearch - Search Relevance team, focusing on vector search capabilities and search relevance within Elasticsearch, contributing to design, implementation, and improvements across the search experience and related algorithms.

Responsibilities

  • Lead initiatives within Elasticsearch to produce an industry-leading search engine offering, supplying unparalleled speed and relevance in search.
  • Contribute to Elasticsearch full time, building new search features and fixing intriguing bugs, including algorithm or data structure development when needed.
  • Work with a globally distributed team focused on the vector search capabilities of Elasticsearch.
  • Be an expert on Elasticsearch search relevance and drive improvements based on questions and instincts.
  • Collaborate with community members worldwide on issues and pull requests, triaging or handling them as needed.
  • Write idiomatic modern Java (Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java).

Qualifications

  • Implemented novel techniques in vector similarity on a search platform with a large user base or contributed to academic research in vector similarity information retrieval.
  • Professional experience with search or vector databases, and use of HNSW, IVF, or other relevant algorithms and libraries at scale.
  • Solid skills in core Java, familiar with standard library data structures, concurrency constructs, and features like lambdas.
  • Ability to work with high autonomy, guide projects from conception to delivery, including technical design and cross-team collaboration.
  • Experience developing collaboratively and giving/receiving feedback on code, APIs, and approaches; strong asynchronous collaboration is a bonus.
  • Experience with multiple data storage technologies such as Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Cassandra; understanding why they work as they do.
  • Proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code while owning outcomes.
  • Ability to collaborate across functions and switch between projects, codebases, or teams based on priorities.
  • Autonomous, able to drive decisions and results in a distributed team using asynchronous, direct, and transparent communication.
Last updated Sep 3, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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