Principal Software Engineer - Search Relevance - Elasticsearch

Elastic, the Search AI Company, enables everyone to find the answers they need in real time using all their data. They are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to enhance the vector and keyword search functionality within Elasticsearch, focusing on new feature design and implementation.

Responsibilities:

• Lead initiatives within Elasticsearch to produce an industry-leading search engine 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
• Sometimes you'll need to get close to the operating system and hardware
• Work with a globally distributed team of experienced engineers focused on the search capabilities of Elasticsearch
• Be an expert on Elasticsearch search relevance. You'll identify and drive improvements in this area based on your questions and your instincts
• Work with community members from all over the world on issues and pull requests, sometimes triaging them and handing them off to other experts and sometimes handling them yourself
• Write idiomatic modern Java -- Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java!

Requirements:

• Professional experience with search and vector databases, and you used HNSW, IVF, or other relevant algorithms and libraries on search platforms at scale
• 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
• Ability to work with a high level of autonomy, and are able to take on projects and guide them from beginning to end, covering both technical design and working with other engineers to develop needed components
• Comfortable developing collaboratively, giving and receiving feedback on code and approaches and APIs
• Experience with several data storage technologies like Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Cassandra and have some idea how they work and why they work that way
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• 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 designing, leading and owning cross-functional initiatives