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Senior Software Engineer - Search Algorithms - Elasticsearch

Elastic· Platform - Elasticsearch
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Hybrid (Switzerland)full-timePosted 1mo ago

About the role

Senior Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Search Relevance team, focusing on delivering a robust and feature-rich search experience and contributing to improvements in Lucene. Responsible for technical direction, design and implementation of new search features, bug fixes, and collaboration across a globally distributed team.

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 designing new algorithms or data structures and working close to OS/hardware.
  • Work with a globally distributed team focused on vector search capabilities of Elasticsearch.
  • Become an expert on Elasticsearch search relevance and drive improvements based on questions and instincts.
  • Collaborate with community members on issues and pull requests, triaging and handing off to other experts or handling them independently.
  • Write idiomatic modern Java – Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java!

Qualifications

  • Professional experience with search or vector databases, including HNSW, IVF, or other relevant algorithms and libraries at scale.
  • Solid skills in core Java, familiar with standard data structures, concurrency, and features like lambdas.
  • Ability to work autonomously from design to delivery and guide projects end-to-end.
  • Experience collaborating in distributed/remote environments; comfort with asynchronous collaboration.
  • Experience with data storage technologies such as Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Cassandra.
  • Proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code while owning outcomes.
  • Ability to collaborate across functions and adapt to multiple projects, codebases, or teams based on priorities.
  • Autonomous and able to drive decisions and results in a distributed team using asynchronous, direct, and transparent communication.

Skills

Required:JavaSearch algorithmsDistributed collaborationData storage technologies

Benefits

  • Competitive pay based on work performed
  • Health coverage for employee and family in many locations
  • Flexible locations and schedules for many roles
  • Generous number of vacation days per year
  • Employer matches up to $2000 (or local currency equivalent) for charitable donations and service
  • Up to 40 hours per year for volunteer projects
  • Minimum of 16 weeks parental leave
Last updated Sep 3, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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