Elastic
Principal Software Engineer - Storage Engine - Elasticsearch
$160K–$304K
United States · Principal · Full-time · Posted Jul 20, 2026
- Visa sponsorship
- Applicants located in or nationals of listed sanctioned countries or regions may require an export license as a condition of employment.
About the job
Leads the technical vision and development of Elasticsearch’s core storage and query engine, focusing on performance, storage efficiency, and observability workloads.
What you'll do
- Lead architecture and performance improvements for core storage engine components.
- Drive cross-organizational initiatives and operational improvements for observability solutions.
- Mentor engineers and advise teams on Elasticsearch; collaborate on issues and pull requests.
What they ask for
- Strong Java skills, including concurrency primitives, data structures, and algorithms.
- Experience implementing techniques to index, store, and query time-series or logs data.
- Experience with one or more storage technologies such as Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Prometheus.
- Proven use of AI to accelerate development, debug systems, and optimize code, with sound judgment to validate results.
Nice to have
- Built with Elasticsearch or contributed to open-source projects; familiarity with source-control workflows and continuous integration.
- Experience with data storage technology or database, search engine, OS, or cloud service development.
Pay
$159,800 — $252,800 USD (base salary); $191,900 — $303,500 USD (base salary)
Tools
Java, Elasticsearch, ES|QL, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Prometheus
AI focus
Uses AI and AI agents to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code, while validating results and recognizing limitations.
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