Senior Software Engineer

Elastic, the Search AI Company, enables everyone to find the answers they need in real time, using all their data, at scale. The Elastic Search AI Platform, used by more than 50% of the Fortune 500, brings together the precision of search and the intelligence of AI. Elastic’s cloud-based solutions for search, security, and observability help organizations deliver on the promise of AI.

We're looking for 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 improving the search experience in Lucene. This technical leader is responsible for contributing to the technical direction and vision for our search capabilities, including design and implementation of new search features, enhancements to search functionality, and resolving bugs.

• 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 bugs, while making the code easier to understand.
• Sometimes invent a new algorithm or data structure, or find and implement one.
• Work with a globally distributed team of experienced engineers focused on the vector search capabilities of Elasticsearch.
• Be an expert on Elasticsearch search relevance, identifying and driving improvements.
• Work with community members on issues and pull requests, triaging and handling them.
• Write idiomatic modern Java -- Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java.

• Implemented novel techniques in vector similarity on a search platform with a large user base or progressed academic research in vector similarity information retrieval.
• Professional experience with search or vector databases, using HNSW, IVF, or other relevant algorithms and libraries on search platforms at scale.
• Solid skills in core Java, conversant in the standard library of data structures and concurrency constructs, as well as lambdas.
• Work with a high level of autonomy, guiding projects from beginning to end.
• Comfortable developing collaboratively, giving and receiving feedback on code and approaches.
• Used several data storage technologies like Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Cassandra.
• Proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code.
• Ability to collaborate across functions and teams, transitioning between projects.
• Work autonomously in a distributed team with asynchronous, direct, and transparent communication.

• Built things with Elasticsearch before.
• Worked with open source projects and familiar with different styles of source control workflow and continuous integration.
• Experience with data storage technology.
• Experience designing, leading, and owning cross-functional initiatives.

Compensation for this role is in the form of base salary. This role does not have a variable compensation component. The typical starting salary range for this role is: €55.800—€88.300 EUR.

Elastic offers competitive pay, health coverage for you and your family in many locations, flexible locations and schedules for many roles, generous vacation days, up to $2000 match for financial donations and service, up to 40 hours each year for volunteer projects, and a minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave.