About the role

Join the Elasticsearch Search Infra team, a globally distributed team of experienced engineers delivering a robust, feature-rich search experience, including contributions that improve search in Lucene. This principal role provides technical vision and direction for Elasticsearch's core search infrastructure, spanning indexing, retrieval, and relevance, and requires deep expertise in search internals and cross-team collaboration.

Responsibilities

Define, lead, and contribute to the evolution of core search and indexing capabilities as a full-time Elasticsearch contributor.
Research advances in search infrastructure, data structures, and retrieval algorithms to build the most efficient and powerful foundations.
Work closely with partners and product teams to shape the long-term technical vision for search at Elastic.
Drive an innovative roadmap for Elasticsearch's indexing, query execution, and relevance layers.
Act as the go-to authority in several areas of Elasticsearch, continuously improving them through insight and instinct.

Qualifications

Experience leading technical projects in the search infrastructure and distributed systems space, building and operating sophisticated search platforms.
Experience mentoring expert engineers, providing technical and professional guidance.
Experience defining a long-term technical vision for a core search or retrieval system across teams and organizations.
Hands-on experience with search and indexing technologies such as Elasticsearch, Lucene, or Solr.
Strong core Java skills with advanced data structures, concurrency constructs, and a drive to optimize algorithms and search data structures.
High autonomy, guiding projects from concept to completion, including technical design and collaboration with other engineers.
Excellent verbal and written communication, with supportive, empathetic, and trusting collaboration across distributed teams.
Track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code while owning the final outcomes.
Bonus points for prior Elasticsearch work, information retrieval theory, and open source contribution experience.

Skills

Backend Java Elasticsearch Performance Distributed Systems Search Indexing

How to apply

Apply directly on the employer's application page. Your application goes straight to them.

Republished listing

This opportunity was discovered on Elastic's public careers page and is republished here for discovery purposes. Applications are handled by the employer.

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