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Senior Software Engineer - Search Algorithms - Elasticsearch

Elastic· Platform - Elasticsearch
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Hybrid (Spain)€67k - €106kFull-timePosted 1mo ago

About the role

Senior Software Engineer on the Elasticsearch - Search Relevance team, focusing on delivering a robust and feature-rich search experience, contributing to improving search relevance, and potentially inventing new algorithms or data structures. Distributed team with emphasis on autonomy, collaboration, and asynchronous communication.

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 inventing new algorithms or data structures or optimizing existing ones.
  • Work with a globally distributed team focused on the vector search capabilities of Elasticsearch.
  • Be an expert on Elasticsearch search relevance, identifying and driving improvements based on questions and instincts.
  • Collaborate with community members on issues and pull requests, triaging or handling them as needed.
  • Write idiomatic modern Java – Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java!

Qualifications

  • Professional experience with search or vector databases, and experience using HNSW, IVF, or other relevant algorithms and libraries at scale.
  • Solid skills in core Java and familiarity with the standard library for data structures, concurrency, and features like lambdas.
  • Ability to work autonomously from design through delivery and collaborate across engineers to develop components.
  • Experience collaborating across distributed, asynchronous environments; bonus for asynchronous collaboration.
  • Experience with multiple data storage technologies (e.g., Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra).
  • Proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debugging complex systems, and optimizing code while owning outcomes.
  • Ability to adapt across functions and teams, driving decisions in a distributed context.
  • Autonomous work style with clear, transparent communication to drive results in a distributed team.

Skills

Required:Search and vector database expertiseJava programmingAutonomous project leadershipCollaborative development
Nice to have:Experience with data storage technologies

Benefits

  • Competitive pay
  • Health coverage for you and your family in many locations
  • Flexible locations and schedules for many roles
  • Generous vacation days
  • Employee donation matching up to $2000
  • Up to 40 hours per year for volunteer projects
  • At least 16 weeks of parental leave
  • Inclusive, accessible work environment
Last updated Sep 3, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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The open source platform that powers search, observability, security, and more ...

Power insights and outcomes with The Elastic Search AI Platform. See into your data and find answers that matter with enterprise solutions designed to help you accelerate time to insight.

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