Principal Software Engineer - Query Engine, Database Internals - Elasticsearch

Elastic is a search AI company that provides cloud-based solutions for search, security, and observability. The Principal Software Engineer will lead the development of analytics capabilities for Elasticsearch’s compute engine and ES|QL, defining technical vision for user interfaces, language syntax, and compute infrastructure while collaborating across teams and organizations.

Responsibilities:

• As a full-time Elasticsearch contributor, you will define, lead, and contribute to the development of data-intensive enhancements
• You’ll research the latest features, data structures, and algorithms in the industry to ensure we’re building the right capabilities for our users
• You’ll work directly with our partners and product teams to understand their needs and build out a strategic vision for the longer term
• You’ll bring your past experience in analytics systems to help build and drive an innovative roadmap for ES|QL and the compute engine
• As an authority in several areas of Elasticsearch, everyone will turn to you when they have a question about that area
• You'll improve those areas based on your questions and your instincts

Requirements:

• Experience leading technical projects in the data and enterprise architecture areas. You bring proven knowledge in building and running sophisticated technical infrastructures and engineering sound software systems
• Experience mentoring expert engineers, providing technical and professional guidance
• Experience defining a long-term technical vision for an area of a data-intensive application, working across teams and organizations to collaboratively build the technical roadmap
• Hands-on experience with search and analytics APIs, some examples may include Splunk SPL, Elasticsearch, Datadog, Dynatrace, and New Relic
• Strong skills in core Java and are conversant in the standard library of data structures and concurrency constructs, as well as newer features like lambdas. You have a strong desire to optimize and make use of the most efficient data structures and algorithms
• Working with a high level of autonomy, able to tackle projects and guide them from beginning to end. This covers both technical design and working with other engineers to develop needed components
• Experience with data storage technologies like Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Cassandra, and an understanding of how they work and why they work that way
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills. Collaborating on the internet is hard. We try to be supportive, empathetic, and trusting in all of our interactions. And we expect that from everyone too
• You have a proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code, while still owning the final outcomes
• You possess the ability to collaborate across functions and teams and seamlessly transition between different projects, codebases, or teams based on business priorities
• You work autonomously and can drive decisions and results in a distributed team by leveraging asynchronous, direct, and transparent communication
• You've built things with Elasticsearch before, and you have experience in the search and information retrieval space and understand the constructs and theory behind it
• Experience working with open source projects and familiar with different styles of source control workflow and continuous integration