Principal Software Engineer - Vector Search - Elasticsearch

Elastic
Portugal
Full timeEUR 67,000 - 106,000Function: Software EngineeringSkills: ["Communication","Autonomy","Collaboration","Code review","Ownership"]

Join the globally distributed Elasticsearch Search team to lead initiatives for an industry-leading vector database experience. You’ll design and implement new vector search features, enhance existing functionality, and resolve complex bugs, often inventing algorithms or data structures as needed. Work closely with experts on vector similarity and search relevance, contribute to open source community issues and pull requests, and write idiomatic modern Java across a large-scale search platform.

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FursaFursa
Elastic
Elastic
2 days ago

Principal Software Engineer - Vector Search - Elasticsearch

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Source: Company careers pageValidated by: Fursa AI
Last checked: 5 hours agoStatus: Live

Job Summary

Join the globally distributed Elasticsearch Search team to lead initiatives for an industry-leading vector database experience. You’ll design and implement new vector search features, enhance existing functionality, and resolve complex bugs, often inventing algorithms or data structures as needed. Work closely with experts on vector similarity and search relevance, contribute to open source community issues and pull requests, and write idiomatic modern Java across a large-scale search platform.
Location: Portugal
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Software Engineering
Seniority: Mid level

Key Responsibilities

  • •Lead initiatives within Elasticsearch to produce an industry-leading vector database offering with high speed and relevance in search.
  • •Build new vector search features, enhance existing vector search functionality, and resolve complex bugs while improving code clarity.
  • •Collaborate with a globally distributed team focused on vector search capabilities in Elasticsearch.
  • •Serve as an expert on how Elasticsearch implements vector similarity for search relevance, improving the area based on questions and instincts.
  • •Contribute to the community via issues and pull requests, sometimes triaging and handing off, and sometimes handling directly.

Pay and Benefits

Salary: EUR 67,000 - 106,000
Perks:Health InsurancePaid LeaveParental LeaveVolunteer Time

Key Requirements

  • •Implemented novel techniques in vector similarity for a search platform with a large user base or advanced academic research in vector similarity information retrieval.
  • •Professional experience with vector similarity and vector databases, including using HNSW, IVF, or related algorithms and libraries at scale.
  • •Strong core Java skills, including understanding data structures and concurrency constructs (including lambdas).
  • •High autonomy to take projects from beginning to end, owning both technical design and collaboration with other engineers to deliver components.
  • •Experience with data storage technologies such as Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Cassandra and an understanding of how they work.
Experience:SearchVector databasesOpen source
Skills:CommunicationAutonomyCollaborationCode reviewOwnership
Tech Stack:JavaLuceneElasticsearchVector similarityVector databasesHNSWIVFLambdasSolrPostgreSQLMongoDBCassandraGitHubZoomSlack

Company Brief

Elastic
Builds the Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, Logstash) and provides search, observability, and security solutions that enable organizations to search, analyze, and protect data in real time across applications, infrastructure, and enterprises.
Industry: Data Infrastructure
Company Size: Enterprise (1,001+ employees)
Revenue: USD 1B+
Growth: Public Company
Valuation: Public Company (Market Cap in USD)
Funding: IPO / Publicly Listed
Headquarters: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Founded: 2012
WebsiteLinkedIn