Principal Software Engineer - Search Algorithms - Elasticsearch

What is the role

We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Search team. This globally-distributed team of expert engineers focuses on delivering a robust and feature-rich search experience, including contributing to improving the search experience in Lucene. This role focuses on enhancing the vector similarity search functionality within Elasticsearch, covering the design and implementation of new vector search features, enhancements to existing vector search functionality, and resolving bugs.

Elastic is distributed by intention. We collaborate across continents every day over email, GitHub, Zoom, and Slack. We write fast, scalable and intuitive software by empowering individual engineers, code reviewing every change, deciding big things by consensus, and striving for incremental improvements.

What You Will Be Doing

• Lead initiatives within Elasticsearch to produce an industry-leading vector database offering, supplying unparalleled speed and relevance in search.
• Contribute to Elasticsearch full time, building new search features and fixing intriguing bugs, all while making the code easier to understand. Invent or implement new algorithms or data structures, getting close to the operating system and hardware when needed.
• Work with a globally distributed team of experienced engineers focused on the vector search capabilities of Elasticsearch.
• Be an expert on how Elasticsearch implements vector similarity in support of search relevance.
• Work with community members from all over the world on issues and pull requests.
• Write idiomatic modern Java.

What You Bring Along

• Professional experience with vector similarity and vector databases, using HNSW, IVF, or other relevant algorithms and libraries on search platforms at scale.
• Strong skills in core Java, conversant in the standard library of data structures, concurrency constructs, and features like lambdas.
• High level of autonomy to take on projects and guide them from beginning to end, including technical design and cross-engineer collaboration.
• Comfort developing collaboratively, giving and receiving feedback asynchronously and directly.
• Experience using data storage technologies like Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Cassandra.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code while owning final outcomes.
• Ability to collaborate across functions and teams and transition between projects/codebases based on business priorities.

Bonus Points

• Experience building things with Elasticsearch.
• Experience with open-source projects, modern source control workflows, and continuous integration.
• Experience designing, leading, and owning cross-functional initiatives.