About Elastic

Elastic is the company behind Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash). It sells search, observability, and security products built on that search engine, primarily through its Elastic Cloud managed service.

Elastic currently has 272 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $133,100–$210,600 across 93 roles with salary data.

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TL;DR · Principal Software Engineer, Search Infra, Elasticsearch

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Principal Software Engineer - Search Infra - Elasticsearch joins the Search Infra team to provide technical vision and direction for core search infrastructure, including indexing, retrieval, and relevance. This role involves defining and building next-generation capabilities by researching advances in data structures and retrieval algorithms while collaborating with product teams to shape long-term roadmaps. The successful candidate will serve as a subject matter expert on search internals, contributing directly to the Lucene project and improving query execution layers. Required skills include expertise in Java, advanced data structures, concurrency constructs, and experience with distributed systems. Candidates should have hands-on experience with technologies like Elasticsearch, Lucene, or Solr. The role focuses on solving complex technical challenges within the search and information retrieval space to build high-performance software for large-scale data systems.

What does a Software Engineer earn in Remote?

Median $202482 from 350 postings across 56 companies.

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Skills

Elasticsearch Lucene Solr Java Distributed Systems Data Structures Algorithms Information Retrieval Open Source GitHub Source Control Search Infrastructure Indexing Query Execution

What you'll do

Define, lead, and contribute to the evolution of core search and indexing capabilities.
Research advances in search infrastructure, data structures, and retrieval algorithms.
Provide technical vision and direction for Elasticsearch’s core search infrastructure.
Develop an innovative roadmap for indexing, query execution, and relevance layers.
Act as a subject matter expert for specific domains within the search infrastructure.
Mentor other engineers by providing both technical and professional guidance.
Drive projects from initial concept through to final completion including technical design.
Ensure all code contributions comply with secure software development frameworks and privacy policies.

What we're looking for

Experience leading technical projects in search infrastructure and distributed systems.
Experience mentoring expert engineers with technical and professional guidance.
Experience defining long-term technical vision for core search or retrieval systems across teams.
Hands-on experience with search and indexing technologies such as Elasticsearch, Lucene, or Solr.
Proficiency in core Java, advanced data structures, concurrency constructs, and modern language features like lambdas.
Ability to work autonomously from concept to completion including technical design and collaboration.
Experience with large-scale data systems or distributed storage engines.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills for collaborating across distributed teams.
Experience building with Elasticsearch and understanding search theory (preferred).
Experience with open source projects and familiar with various source control workflows and CI (preferred).