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.

Most-posted roles

View all roles at Elastic

At a glance

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

Role Posting Log in to save

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, leading, and contributing to the evolution of search and indexing capabilities while researching advances in data structures and retrieval algorithms. The successful candidate will build next-generation capabilities for the platform by collaborating with product teams to shape long-term technical roadmaps. Key requirements include expertise in Java, advanced data structures, concurrency constructs, and experience with technologies like Elasticsearch, Lucene, or Solr. The role focuses on solving complex problems within search infrastructure and distributed systems, specifically improving the core search experience in Lucene and optimizing query execution layers to ensure high-performance results for large-scale data environments.

What does a Software Engineer earn in Remote?

Median $202482 from 350 postings across 56 companies.

See salary data

Skills

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

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 to provide guidance on specific domains of Elasticsearch.
Mentor other engineers by providing both technical and professional guidance.
Manage projects from initial concept through technical design to final completion.
Ensure all code and systems comply with security and data protection standards.

What we're looking for

Experience leading technical projects in search infrastructure and distributed systems.
Proven experience mentoring expert engineers through technical and professional guidance.
Experience defining long-term technical visions 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 on technical designs and project execution.
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).