Senior Software Engineer - Vector Search - Elasticsearch

Role Overview

Elastic is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch Search Relevance team. This globally-distributed team focuses on delivering a robust and feature-rich search experience, including contributing to Lucene. In this role, you will help shape the technical direction for search capabilities, design and implement new search features, improve search functionality, and resolve bugs.

Responsibilities

• Lead initiatives within Elasticsearch to deliver an industry-leading search engine offering speed and relevance.
• Contribute full-time to Elasticsearch, building search features, resolving bugs, and implementing new algorithms and data structures.
• Work closely with hardware and operating system levels when needed.
• Collaborate with a globally distributed team focused on the vector search capabilities of Elasticsearch.
• Serve as an expert on search relevance, identifying and driving key improvements.
• Collaborate with community members globally on issues and pull requests.
• Write idiomatic, modern Java.

Qualifications

Required

• Proven experience implementing novel techniques in vector similarity on a large-scale search platform or progressing academic research in vector similarity information retrieval.
• Professional experience with search or vector databases, utilizing algorithms/libraries such as HNSW, IVF, etc., at scale.
• Solid proficiency in core Java, standard library data structures, concurrency constructs, and modern features (e.g., lambdas).
• High degree of autonomy to lead projects end-to-end, from technical design through collaborative execution.
• Experience developing and collaborating asynchronously across distributed teams.
• Experience with data storage technologies (e.g., Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra) and knowledge of their underlying mechanisms.
• Track record of leveraging AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code.

Preferred

• Prior experience building solutions with Elasticsearch.
• Experience contributing to open source projects, source control workflows, and continuous integration.
• Background designing, leading, and owning cross-functional initiatives.