Elasticsearch Senior Software Engineer Search Internals, Lucene

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. 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 to enable everyone to accelerate the results that matter. By taking advantage of all structured and unstructured data securing and protecting private information more effectively Elastics complete cloud-based solutions for search security and observability help organizations deliver on the promise of AI.

What is The Role:

Were looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Search Scaling team. This globally-distributed team of experienced engineers focuses on delivering a robust and feature-rich search experience including contributing to improving the search experience in Lucene. This is a senior software engineering role that covers the design and implementation of new features in search enhancements to existing search features and resolving bugs.

Our company is distributed by intention. We hire the best engineers we can find wherever they are whoever they are. We collaborate across continents every day over email GitHub Zoom and Slack. At our best we write fast scalable and intuitive software. We believe that the best way to do that is to empower individual engineers code review every change decide big things by consensus and strive for incremental improvements.

What You Will Be Doing:

• Youll be a full time Elasticsearch contributor building data intensive new features and fixing intriguing bugs all while making the code easier to understand. Sometimes youll need to invent a new algorithm or data structure. Or find one and implement it. Sometimes youll need to get close to the operating system and hardware.
• Youll work with a globally distributed team of experienced engineers focused on the search capabilities of Elasticsearch.
• Youll be an expert in several areas of Elasticsearch and everyone will turn to you when they have a question about them. Youll improve those areas based on your questions and your instincts.
• Youll help us create the future of search within Elasticsearch - building a scalable search tier for our Serverless platform and writing search functionality in ESQL our new piped query language as two examples.
• Youll 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.
• Youll write idiomatic modern Java -- Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java!

What You Will Bring:

• You have 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 work with a high level of autonomy and are able to take on projects and guide them from beginning to end. This covers both technical design and working with other engineers to develop needed components.
• Youre comfortable developing collaboratively. Giving and receiving feedback on code and approaches and APIs is hard! Bonus points if youve collaborated over the internet because thats harder. Double bonus points for asynchronous collaboration over the internet. Thats even harder but we do it anyway because its the best way we know how to build software.
• Youve 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.
• You have excellent verbal and written communication skills. Like we said collaborating on the internet is hard. We try to be respectful empathetic and trusting in all of our interactions. And wed expect that from you too.

Bonus Points

• Youve built things with Elasticsearch before.
• Youve worked in the search and information retrieval space.
• You have experience writing code for software-as-a-service or platforms-as-a-service.
• Youve worked on data storage technology.
• You have experience designing leading and owning cross-functional initiatives.
• Youve worked with open source projects and are familiar with different styles of source control workflow and continuous integration.

Additional Information - We Take Care of Our People

As a distributed company diversity drives our identity. Whether youre looking to launch a new career or grow an existing one Elastic is the type of company where you can balance great work with great life. Your age is only a number. It doesnt matter if youre just out of college or your children are; we need you for what you can do.

We strive to have parity of benefits across regions and while regulations differ from place to place we believe taking care of our people is the right thing to do.

• Competitive pay based on the work you do here and not your previous salary
• Health coverage for you and your family in many locations
• Ability to craft your calendar with flexible locations and schedules for many roles
• Generous number of vacation days each year
• 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
• Embracing parenthood with minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave

Different people approach problems differently. We need that. Elastic is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer committed to diversity equity and inclusion. 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.

We welcome individuals with disabilities and strive to create an accessible and inclusive experience for all individuals. To request an accommodation during the application or the recruiting process please email We will reply to your request within 24 business hours of submission.

Applicants have rights under Federal Employment Laws view posters linked below: Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Poster;Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision Poster; Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) Poster and Know Your Rights (Poster)

Elasticsearch develops and distributes encryption software and technology that is subject to U.S. export controls and licensing requirements for individuals who are located in or are nationals of the following sanctioned countries and regions: Belarus Cuba Iran North Korea Russia Syria the Crimea Region of Ukraine the Donetsk Peoples Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk Peoples Republic (LNR). If you are located in or are a national of one of the listed countries or regions an export license may be required as a condition of your employment in this role. Please note that national origin and/or nationality do not affect eligibility for employment with Elastic.

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