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Elastic

Senior Software Engineer - Search Relevance in ES|QL - Elasticsearch

Elastic
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senior full-time $128,300-$203,000 CAD Canada

First indexed 28 Jul 2026

Description

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.

We're looking for a Senior Software Developer to join the Elasticsearch - Search Relevance team. This globally-distributed team of expert engineers focuses on delivering a robust and feature-rich search experience, including contributing to improving the search experience in Lucene.

Responsibilities:

  • Lead initiatives within Elasticsearch to produce an industry-leading search engine offering, supplying unparalleled speed and relevance in search.
  • Contribute to Elasticsearch full time, building new search features and fixing intriguing bugs, all while making the code easier to understand.
  • Work with a globally distributed team of experienced engineers focused on the vector search capabilities of Elasticsearch.
  • Be an expert on Elasticsearch search relevance. You'll identify and drive improvements in this area based on your questions and your instincts.
  • 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.
  • Write idiomatic modern Java -- Elasticsearch is 99.8% Java!

Requirements:

  • Professional experience with search or vector databases, and you used HNSW, IVF, or other relevant algorithms and libraries on search platforms at scale.
  • Solid skills in core Java and conversant in the standard library of data structures and concurrency constructs, as well as other features like lambdas.
  • Work with a high level of autonomy and able to take on projects and guide them from beginning to end.
  • Comfortable developing collaboratively, giving and receiving feedback on code and approaches and APIs.
  • 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.
  • Proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code, while still owning the final outcomes.
  • Possess the ability to collaborate across functions and teams and seamlessly transition between different projects, codebases, or teams based on business priorities.
  • Work autonomously and can drive decisions and results in a distributed team by leveraging asynchronous, direct, and transparent communication.

Benefits:

  • 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.

The typical starting salary range for this role is: $128,300-$203,000 CAD

This listing is enriched and indexed by YubHub. To apply, use the employer's original posting: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/elastic/jobs/8091367