Principal Software Engineer - Storage Engine - Elasticsearch

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 — Elastic’s complete, cloud-based solutions for search, security, and observability help organizations deliver on the promise of AI.

What is The Role

We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Storage Engine team. This globally distributed, fully remote team of experienced engineers develops core storage and query technologies for observability workloads, including improving storage efficiency, advancing ES|QL query processing and performance, and optimizing data layouts for object storage.

This role is responsible for driving the technical vision, architecture, and design of Elasticsearch's core storage and query engine. The ideal candidate has a proven track record of designing high-performance, scalable database or search engine technologies, along with the ability to drive technical initiatives across organizations.

Our company is distributed by intention. We hire the best developers 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

Lead the architectural evolution of core storage engine components, continuously identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks in indexing layouts, serialization formats, and resource utilization.

Lead cross organizational initiatives to drive and build industry-leading observability solutions.

Work with a globally distributed team of experienced engineers focused on the logs and metrics capabilities of Elasticsearch.

Drive continuous operational and system improvements by introducing best practices for clean coding standards, demystifying complex system behaviors, untangling complexity to bring architectural clarity across the platform.

Serve as a subject matter expert (SME) across key areas of Elasticsearch, acting as a trusted technical advisor and mentor to the wider engineering organization.

Work with a global community to triage, resolve, and review issues and pull requests, collaborating with domain experts as needed.

Write idiomatic modern Java -- Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java!

What You Bring

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 have a proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code, while still owning the final outcomes.

You bring a prompt-engineering mindset to know how to leverage AI agents effectively, using sound engineering judgment to validate results and recognize its limitations.

You have implemented novel techniques to efficiently index, store, and query time-series or logs data.

You have experience with one or more data storage technologies like Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Prometheus and have some idea how they work and why they work that way.

You have strong core Java skills, a deep understanding of its concurrency primitives, with a proven ability to design and optimize efficient data structures and algorithms.

You excel in a collaborative environment, actively participate in technical discussions, and work effectively across distributed teams. Because it's the best way we know how to build software.

You have excellent verbal and written communication skills and collaborate with respect, empathy, and professionalism in a distributed team.

Bonus Points

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.

You’ve worked on data storage technology.

You have experience designing, leading, and owning cross-functional initiatives.

You have past working experience with database, search engine, OS, or cloud service development.

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 new hires in this role is listed below. In select locations (including Seattle WA, Los Angeles CA, the San Francisco Bay Area CA, and the New York City Metro Area), an alternate range may apply as specified below.

These ranges represent the lowest to highest salary we reasonably and in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range, and the ranges may be modified in the future.

An employee's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, performance, and business or organizational needs.

Elastic believes that employees should have the opportunity to share in the value that we create together for our shareholders. Therefore, in addition to cash compensation, this role is currently eligible to participate in Elastic's stock program. Our total rewards package also includes a company-matched 401k with dollar-for-dollar matching up to 6% of eligible earnings, along with a range of other benefits offered with a holistic emphasis on employee well-being.

The typical starting salary range for this role is:

$159,800 — $252,800 USD

The typical starting salary range for this role in the select locations listed above is:

$191,900 — $303,500 USD

Additional Information - We Take Care of Our People

As a distributed company, diversity drives our identity. Whether you’re 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 doesn’t matter if you’re 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 inclus