Elastic, the Search AI Company, enables everyone to find the answers they need in real time, using all their data, at scale — unleashing the potential of businesses and people. By taking advantage of all structured and unstructured data — securing and protecting private information more effectively — Elastic's complete, cloud-based solutions for search, security, and observability help organizations deliver on the promise of AI. We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Search team.

This is a principal software engineering role that 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. We collaborate across continents every day over email, GitHub, Zoom, and Slack. At our best, we write fast, scalable and intuitive software.

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. Sometimes you'll need to invent a new algorithm or data structure.

Or find one and implement it. 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 and everyone will turn to you when they have a question about this area.





Write idiomatic modern Java -- Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java! Professional experience with vector similarity and vector databases, and you used HNSW, IVF, or other relevant algorithms and libraries on search platforms at scale. You have strong skills in core Java and are conversant in the standard library of data structures and concurrency constructs, as well as other features like lambdas.

You work with a high level of autonomy, and are able to take on projects and guide them from beginning to end. Bonus points if you've collaborated over the internet because that's harder. Double bonus points for asynchronous collaboration over the internet.

That's even harder, but we do it anyway because it's the best way we know how to build software. You've used several data storage technologies like Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Cassandra and have some idea how they work and why they work that way. Like we said, collaborating on the internet is hard.

You possess the ability to collaborate across functions and teams and seamlessly transition between different projects, codebases, or teams based on business priorities You've built things with Elasticsearch before.



You've worked with open source projects and are familiar with different styles of source control workflow and continuous integration.

Experience with data storage technology. It doesn't matter if you're just out of college or your children are; Health coverage for you and your family in many locations Increase your impact - We match up to $2000 (or local currency equivalent) for financial donations and service Up to 40 hours each year to use toward volunteer projects you love Take ownership of protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of organizational data and systems by following applicable privacy and security policies, standards, and procedures. Ensure that all individual contributions follow Elastic's Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF).

Proactively participate in mandatory role-based training to ensure personal technical execution consistently aligns with the highest standards of data protection, data privacy, and system resilience. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other basis protected by federal, state or local law, ordinance or regulation. Elasticsearch develops and distributes technology and information that is subject to U.Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, or Russia, including the Ukrainian territories annexed by Russia (The Crimea region of Ukraine, The Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), The Luhansk People's Republic (LNR), Kherson or Zaporizhzhia).

📌 Principal Software Engineer - AI (La Mancha)
🏢 Elastic
📍 La Mancha