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Principal Software Engineer - Search Infra - Elasticsearch

Elastic· Platform - Elasticsearch
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Hybrid (Spain)€80.4k - €127.2kfull-timePosted 4w ago

About the role

Principal Software Engineer role in Elasticsearch - Search Infra, focusing on core search infrastructure, indexing, retrieval, and relevance. Responsible for technical vision, advancement of Elasticsearch capabilities, and cross-team collaboration on large-scale search systems.

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 long-term technical vision for search at Elastic.
  • Drive roadmap for Elasticsearch’s indexing, query execution, and relevance layers as an authority in multiple domains.
  • Mentor engineers and guide projects from concept to completion, including technical design and component development.

Qualifications

  • Experience leading technical projects in search infrastructure and distributed systems.
  • Experience mentoring expert engineers and providing technical and professional guidance.
  • Experience defining long-term technical vision for a core search or retrieval system across teams.
  • Hands-on experience with Elasticsearch, Lucene, or Solr.
  • Strong Java skills and familiarity with data structures, concurrency, and modern language features (e.g., lambdas).
  • Ability to work autonomously on technical design and collaboration with engineers.
  • Experience with large-scale data or search systems and understanding of how they work.
  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills for collaboration across distributed teams.

Skills

Required:Technical leadership in search infrastructureMentorship and team leadershipLong-term technical visionJavaSearch technologies

Benefits

  • Competitive pay based on work performed; no variable compensation component mentioned.
  • Health coverage for employee and family in many locations.
  • Flexible locations and schedules.
  • Generous vacation days.
  • Donation matching up to $2000 (or local currency equivalent).
  • Up to 40 hours per year for volunteer projects.
  • Parental leave minimum of 16 weeks.
Last updated Sep 24, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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