Senior Software Engineer - Storage Engine - Elasticsearch

What is The Role

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Storage Engine team. This globally distributed, fully remote team develops core storage and query technologies for observability workloads, including improving storage efficiency, advancing ES|QL query processing and performance, and optimizing data layouts for object storage.

This role is responsible for designing, implementing, and optimizing Elasticsearch's core storage and query engine.

What You Will Be Doing

• Lead the architectural evolution of core storage engine components, continuously identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks in indexing layouts, serialization formats, and resource utilization.
• Lead cross-organizational initiatives to drive and build industry-leading observability solutions.
• Work with a globally distributed team focused on the logs and metrics capabilities of Elasticsearch.
• Drive continuous operational and system improvements by introducing best practices for clean coding standards and bringing architectural clarity across the platform.
• Serve as a subject matter expert (SME) across key areas of Elasticsearch, acting as a trusted technical advisor and mentor to the wider engineering organization.
• Work with a global community to triage, resolve, and review issues and pull requests.
• Write idiomatic modern Java.

What You Bring

• Ability to collaborate across functions and teams and seamlessly transition between different projects, codebases, or teams based on business priorities.
• Ability to work autonomously and drive decisions and results in a distributed team through asynchronous, direct, and transparent communication.
• Proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code, while owning final outcomes.
• Prompt-engineering mindset to effectively leverage AI agents with sound engineering judgment.
• Experience implementing novel techniques to efficiently index, store, and query time-series or logs data.
• Experience with one or more data storage technologies like Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Prometheus.
• Strong core Java skills, deep understanding of concurrency primitives, and ability to design and optimize efficient data structures and algorithms.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Bonus Points

• You've built things with Elasticsearch before.
• Experience working with open-source projects, source control workflows, and continuous integration.
• Experience working on data storage technology.
• Experience designing, leading, and owning cross-functional initiatives.
• Past working experience with database, search engine, OS, or cloud service development.