Senior Software Engineer - Performance Tuning - Elasticsearch

The role

You will contribute to performance engineering initiatives for Elasticsearch through code and technical analysis. You will work on optimization, predictability, and scalability of distributed systems.

What you will do

• Contribute to core performance engineering initiatives from development to production.
• Execute technical designs and plans for architectural and code-level performance improvements.
• Implement foundational performance models and methodologies for complex, distributed systems.
• Support optimization strategies to ensure Elasticsearch remains performant, predictable, and scalable.
• Profile and analyze system behavior to identify bottlenecks in logging, metrics, vector search, and ES|QL.
• Ensure robust performance benchmarks and regression detection for stateful and stateless architectures.
• Collaborate with peers to apply performance-focused development practices into new features.
• Build AI-assisted optimization harnesses for profiling, hypothesis testing, and benchmarking.
• Provide technical guidance and peer reviews to other engineers.

Required qualifications

• Deep knowledge of Java internals and JVM memory management.
• Understanding of concurrency models.
• Ability to write high-performance, thread-safe, and lock-free code.
• Experience working with large open-source and enterprise codebases.
• Proven experience in profiling and optimizing distributed systems.
• Experience with benchmarking tools such as JMH or Rally.
• Experience identifying performance regressions and implementing algorithmic or hardware-aware optimizations.
• Solid comprehension of distributed systems architecture, including partition tolerance, cluster state propagation, and scaling challenges.
• Proven track record of using AI or advanced tooling to accelerate optimization, debug performance issues, and automate benchmarking.
• Ability to collaborate effectively within a team environment.
• Ability to collaborate across functions and teams.
• Ability to work autonomously and drive decisions in a distributed team using asynchronous 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 optimizations.
• 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.

Benefits

• Stock program eligibility
• Company-matched 401k up to 6% of eligible earnings
• Health coverage for you and your family in many locations
• Flexible locations and schedules
• Generous number of vacation days each year
• Up to $2000 match for financial donations and service
• Up to 40 hours each year to use toward volunteer projects
• Minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave

Before you apply

• An export license may be required if you are located in or are a national of Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, the Crimea Region of Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), or the

About the company

Elastic, the Search AI Company, provides cloud-based solutions for search, security, and observability. The Elastic Search AI Platform is used by more than 50% of the Fortune 500.