Elastic
Principal Software Engineer - Search Infra - Elasticsearch
United Kingdom +1 · Principal · Full-time · Posted Sep 18, 2026
- Location
- United Kingdom
United States - Visa sponsorship
- An export license may be required for employment if located in or a national of the listed sanctioned countries or regions.
About the job
Defines, leads, and builds Elasticsearch’s core search and indexing capabilities, setting technical direction for search infrastructure, retrieval, and relevance.
What you'll do
- Lead the evolution of search and indexing capabilities, including indexing, query execution, and relevance.
- Research search infrastructure, data structures, and retrieval algorithms to improve system efficiency and capability.
- Set long-term technical vision and roadmap in collaboration with partner teams; mentor engineers and serve as a domain expert.
What they ask for
- Experience leading technical projects in search infrastructure and distributed systems.
- Experience mentoring expert engineers and defining long-term technical vision for a core search or retrieval system across teams.
- Hands-on experience with search and indexing technologies such as Elasticsearch, Lucene, or Solr, and experience with large-scale data or search systems.
- Strong core Java skills; familiarity with advanced data structures, concurrency constructs, and newer language features such as lambdas.
Nice to have
- Experience in search and information retrieval, including its constructs and theory.
- Experience with open source projects, source control workflows, and continuous integration.
Tools
Elasticsearch, Lucene, Solr, Java
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