Principal Software Engineer - Query Engine, Database Internals - Elasticsearch

Role

Elastic is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Elasticsearch Analytical Engine team in the United States. The team builds analytics capabilities for Elasticsearch's new compute engine and piped query language, ES|QL.

Provide technical vision and direction for user interfaces, language syntax, and compute infrastructure. Work across organizations within a globally distributed engineering team. Elasticsearch is written almost entirely in modern Java.

Responsibilities

• Define, lead, and contribute to data-intensive enhancements for ES|QL and the compute engine.
• Research industry features, data structures, and algorithms to identify valuable capabilities for users.
• Partner with product teams and partners to understand needs and develop a long-term technical vision and roadmap.
• Serve as a technical authority in areas of Elasticsearch and drive improvements.
• Collaborate with user experience teams and teams building Search, Security, and Observability solutions on the APIs.
• Mentor expert engineers and provide technical and professional guidance.
• Participate in code review and collaborative technical decision-making.

Qualifications

• Experience leading technical projects in data and enterprise architecture, building sophisticated infrastructure, and engineering sound software systems.
• Experience mentoring expert engineers.
• Experience defining long-term technical vision for data-intensive applications and collaboratively developing roadmaps across teams and organizations.
• Hands-on experience with search and analytics APIs, such as Splunk SPL, Elasticsearch, Datadog, Dynatrace, or New Relic.
• Strong core Java skills, including standard-library data structures, concurrency constructs, and newer features such as lambdas.
• A strong desire to optimize algorithms and data structures.
• Ability to independently guide projects from technical design through delivery while collaborating with other engineers.
• Experience with storage technologies such as Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Cassandra, including an understanding of their internals.
• Excellent verbal and written communication and supportive, empathetic, trusting collaboration.
• A proven track record using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code while retaining ownership of outcomes.
• Ability to collaborate across functions and adapt between projects, codebases, and teams according to business priorities.
• Ability to drive decisions and results autonomously in a distributed team through asynchronous, direct, transparent communication.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building with Elasticsearch and knowledge of search and information retrieval theory.
• Experience with open-source projects, source-control workflows, and continuous integration.

Compensation and Benefits

• Typical starting annual base salary: $159,800–$252,800 USD.
• Alternate range for select locations, including Seattle, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the New York City Metro Area: $191,900–$303,500 USD.
• Compensation is base salary only, with no variable compensation component.
• Eligible for Elastic's stock program.
• Company-matched 401(k), with dollar-for-dollar matching up to 6% of eligible earnings.
• Health coverage for employees and families in many locations, flexible locations and schedules for many roles, generous vacation, donation and service matching up to $2,000 or local equivalent, up to 40 volunteer hours annually, and at least 16 weeks of parental leave. Benefits vary by region.

Application and Employment Information

• Recruiting accommodations may be requested at candidate_accessibility@elastic.co; Elastic states it will respond within 24 business hours.
• An export license may be required as a condition of employment for individuals located in or nationals of Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Russia, or the listed Russian-annexed Ukrainian territories: Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. National origin or nationality does not itself affect employment eligibility.