About the role

Join the Elasticsearch Search team, a globally distributed team of expert engineers delivering a robust, feature-rich search experience, including contributions to Lucene. This principal role focuses on the vector similarity search functionality within Elasticsearch: designing and implementing new vector search features, enhancing existing functionality, and resolving bugs, with the goal of an industry-leading vector database offering.

Responsibilities

Lead initiatives within Elasticsearch to deliver unparalleled speed and relevance in vector search.
Contribute to Elasticsearch full time, building new search features and fixing intriguing bugs while making the code easier to understand, sometimes inventing a new algorithm or data structure, sometimes getting close to the operating system and hardware.
Be the expert on how Elasticsearch implements vector similarity in support of search relevance, the person everyone turns to with questions in this area.
Work with community members worldwide on issues and pull requests, triaging and handling them.
Write idiomatic modern Java, Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java.

Qualifications

You have implemented novel vector similarity techniques on a search platform with a large user base, or advanced academic research in vector similarity information retrieval.
Professional experience with vector similarity and vector databases, using HNSW, IVF, or other relevant algorithms and libraries at scale.
Strong skills in core Java, including the standard library of data structures and concurrency constructs.
High autonomy, taking projects from beginning to end across technical design and collaboration.
Comfortable with collaborative development and asynchronous code review over the internet.
Experience with several data storage technologies such as Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Cassandra.
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, open source experience, and cross-functional initiative ownership.

Skills

Backend Java Elasticsearch Machine Learning Embeddings Vector Databases Search

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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