# Principal Software Engineer - Performance Tuning - Elasticsearch **Company**: Elastic **Location**: Ireland **Experience**: senior **Job type**: full-time **Salary**: €104,800-€165,700 EUR **Category**: Engineering **Industry**: Technology **Apply**: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/elastic/jobs/8138687?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply **Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_f1b7c013-b87 ## 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. Elasticsearch powers search, observability, and AI retrieval for the world's largest organisations. We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join the Elasticsearch Performance team. In this role, you will lead architectural and code-level performance engineering initiatives. Your goal is to drive the continuous optimisation and predictability of Elasticsearch performance, partnering with area-specific teams to unlock the full potential of our software. ### Responsibilities - Owning core performance engineering initiatives from architecture to production, focusing on the delivery of high-impact optimisations. Leading the technical design, plan, and execution for major architectural and code-level performance improvements. - Developing foundational performance models and methodologies for complex, distributed systems. - Driving optimisation strategies to ensure Elasticsearch remains performant, predictable, and scalable in diverse environments. - Profiling and analysing system behaviour to identify bottlenecks in logging, metrics, vector search, and ES|QL. - Ensuring robust performance benchmarks and regression detection for both stateful and stateless (Serverless) architectures. - Collaborating across the company to embed performance-first thinking into new features from the outset. - Drive automation efforts by designing and building AI-assisted optimisation harnesses that streamline profiling, hypothesis testing, and benchmarking. - Mentoring and coaching other engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and performance-aware development. ### Requirements - You have deep knowledge of Java internals and JVM memory management. You understand how concurrency models work. You can write code that is high-performance, thread-safe, and lock-free. This experience includes working with large open-source and enterprise codebases. - You have proven experience in profiling and optimising distributed systems. This includes deep experience with benchmarking tools (e.g., flamegraphs, JMH, Rally), identifying performance regressions, and implementing algorithmic or hardware-aware optimisations. - You have a solid comprehension of distributed systems architecture, including partition tolerance, cluster state propagation, and scaling challenges in large-scale data stores. - You have a proven track record of using AI or advanced tooling to accelerate optimisation, debug complex performance issues, and automate benchmarking workflows. - You possess the ability to collaborate across functions and teams, acting as a force multiplier for performance engineering across the organisation. - You possess the ability to collaborate across functions and teams and seamlessly transition between different projects, codebases, or teams based on business priorities. - You can work autonomously, drive decisions and result in a distributed team by leveraging asynchronous, direct, and transparent communication. ### Nice to Have - Experience integrating high-performance native libraries (e.g., C++, Rust, SIMD-accelerated code) into Java applications. - Deep knowledge of modern storage engine performance, index modes, or vector search optimisations. - Experience defining and managing Performance SLAs and success criteria for distributed systems. - Experience working on the internals of a large-scale data store or search engine. - Experience working on the internals of a data store or search engine. ### Compensation The typical starting salary range for this role is: €104,800-€165,700 EUR. ### 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. ## Skills ### Required - Java - JVM memory management - concurrency models - distributed systems - performance engineering - benchmarking tools - AI-assisted optimisation ### Nice to have - C++ - Rust - SIMD-accelerated code - modern storage engine performance - index modes - vector search optimisations - Performance SLAs --- Source: [Apply at job-boards.greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/elastic/jobs/8138687?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)