Principal Software Engineer - Performance Tuning - Elasticsearch

Elastic
United States
Workplace: OnsiteFull timeUSD 159,800 - 252,800 annuallyFunction: Software EngineeringSkills: ["Mentoring","Coaching","Collaboration","Autonomous decision-making","Performance optimization"]

Lead architectural and code-level performance engineering for Elasticsearch, driving continuous optimization and predictability across distributed systems. Own high-impact initiatives from design through production, building performance models, benchmarking, and regression detection for stateful and Serverless architectures. Profile bottlenecks across logging, metrics, vector search, and ES|QL, and create automation for AI-assisted optimization and benchmarking workflows. Mentor engineers and embed performance-first thinking company-wide.

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FursaFursa
Elastic
Elastic
4 days ago

Principal Software Engineer - Performance Tuning - Elasticsearch

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Last checked: 3 hours agoStatus: Live

Job Summary

Lead architectural and code-level performance engineering for Elasticsearch, driving continuous optimization and predictability across distributed systems. Own high-impact initiatives from design through production, building performance models, benchmarking, and regression detection for stateful and Serverless architectures. Profile bottlenecks across logging, metrics, vector search, and ES|QL, and create automation for AI-assisted optimization and benchmarking workflows. Mentor engineers and embed performance-first thinking company-wide.
Location: United States
Workplace: Onsite
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Software Engineering
Seniority: Mid level

Key Responsibilities

  • •Own core performance engineering initiatives end-to-end, from architecture through production delivery.
  • •Lead technical design, planning, and execution for major architectural and code-level performance improvements.
  • •Develop foundational performance models and methodologies for complex distributed systems.
  • •Profile and analyze system behavior to identify performance bottlenecks across logging, metrics, vector search, and ES|QL.
  • •Build AI-assisted optimization harnesses to streamline profiling, hypothesis testing, and benchmarking, and mentor engineers on performance-aware development.

Pay and Benefits

Salary: USD 159,800 - 252,800 annually
Equity and Bonus:Equity
Perks:Health Insurance401kParental LeavePaid LeaveVolunteer Time

Key Requirements

  • •Deep knowledge of Java internals and JVM memory management, including concurrency models, with experience writing high-performance, thread-safe, lock-free code.
  • •Proven experience profiling and optimizing distributed systems, including benchmarking tools such as flamegraphs, JMH, and Rally, to identify and address performance regressions.
  • •Solid comprehension of distributed systems architecture, including partition tolerance, cluster state propagation, and large-scale scaling challenges.
  • •Demonstrated ability to use AI or advanced tooling to accelerate optimization, debug complex performance issues, and automate benchmarking workflows.
  • •Ability to collaborate across teams and drive decisions autonomously in a distributed environment using asynchronous communication.
Experience:Open sourceEnterprise softwareDistributed systemsSearch engines
Skills:MentoringCoachingCollaborationAutonomous decision-makingPerformance optimization
Languages:English
Tech Stack:JavaJVMJMHFlamegraphsRallyC++RustSIMDVector searchES|QL

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