Senior Software Engineer - Query Engine, Database Internals - Elasticsearch

About the job

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 Senior Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch - Analytical Engine team. This globally-distributed, completely remote team of senior engineers is responsible for building new analytics capabilities in Elasticsearch’s latest aggregation framework based on a completely new compute engine, and accessed via our new piped query language called ES|QL. This is a senior software engineering role that covers the design and implementation of new features, enhancements to existing features, and resolving bugs.

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

• You'll be a full-time Elasticsearch contributor, building data-intensive new features and fixing intriguing bugs, all while making the code easier to understand. You are able to research what available data structures and algorithms work best to implement a new functionality or enhancement. Sometimes you’ll need to implement a data structure or algorithm in the code base. And there will be times when you'll need to get close to the operating system and hardware.
• You’ll work with a globally distributed team of experienced engineers focused on the search and query (ES|QL) analytics capabilities of Elasticsearch. You’ll get to work with the teams that build the UI to ensure a good user experience, and you’ll get to work with the teams building solutions on top of these APIs
• You'll be an expert in several areas of Elasticsearch, and everyone will turn to you when they have a question about them. You'll improve those areas based on your questions and your instincts.
• You'll work with community members from all over the world on issues and pull requests, sometimes triaging them and handing them off to other experts, and sometimes handling them yourself.
• You'll write idiomatic modern Java -- Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java!

What You Bring

• You have strong skills in core Java and are conversant in the standard library of data structures and concurrency constructs, as well as newer features like lambdas.
• You have experience with software systems engineering
• You have a strong desire to optimize and make use of the most efficient data structures and algorithms.
• You work with a high level of autonomy, and are able to take on projects and guide them from beginning to end. This covers both technical design and working with other engineers to develop needed components.
• You're comfortable developing collaboratively. Giving and receiving feedback on code, approaches, and APIs is hard! Bonus points if you've collaborated over the internet because that's harder. Double bonus points for asynchronous collaboration over the internet. That's even harder, but we do it anyway because it's the best way we know how to build software.
• You've used several data storage technologies like Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Cassandra and have some idea how they work and why they work that way.
• You have excellent verbal and written communication skills. Like we said, collaborating on the internet is hard. We try to be respectful, empathetic, and trusting in all of our interactions. And we'd expect that from you too.
• 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 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.

Bonus Points

• You've built things with Elasticsearch before.
• You’ve worked in the search and information retrieval space. You’re familiar with the data structures and algorithms associated with information retrieval.
• You’ve worked on data storage technology or have experience building data analytics capabilities.
• You have experience designing, leading and owning cross-functional initiatives.
• You've worked with open source projects and are familiar with different styles of source control workflow and continuous integration

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:

$133,100—$210,600 USD

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

$159,900—$252,900 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