Senior Java Engineer - Distributed Systems - Elasticsearch

Elastic, the Search AI Company, is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join their Elasticsearch - Distributed Systems team. This team is crucial for how Elasticsearch provides scale, performance, and resilience, owning how nodes in an Elasticsearch cluster communicate and how data is indexed, allocated, and replicated across nodes. The role involves improving Elasticsearch’s components for concurrent and consistent indexing, maintaining the cluster coordination system for high performance, and pushing the limits on the number of shards, nodes, and petabytes Elasticsearch can handle. The successful candidate will also investigate and propose solutions for performance and concurrency issues, and support other engineers with complex problems. Elastic is a distributed company that values diversity and offers a flexible work environment. They prioritize competitive pay, health coverage, generous vacation, and support for charitable donations and volunteer work. Parental leave and a commitment to inclusivity are also key aspects of their culture.

Requirements

Strong background in distributed systems and consensus algorithms. Strong skills in core Java, including standard library data structures and concurrency constructs. Deep technical proficiency in algorithms. Demonstrated ability to understand and work on complex, highly distributed systems. Ability to build and debug features with broad impact across multiple machines. Ability to own projects from beginning to end, including technical design and collaboration. Experience with data stores. Experience with search, analytics, Lucene. Strong knowledge of the JDK. Familiarity with asynchronous event-driven network frameworks such as Netty.

Responsibilities

Improving Elasticsearch’s components that support concurrent and consistent indexing across multiple machines. Maintaining the cluster coordination system to keep performance high even as nodes join or leave the cluster and data moves. Ensuring the safety and liveness properties of the system as a whole. Pushing the limits on the number of shards, nodes, and petabytes that Elasticsearch can handle. Investigating all kinds of issues, including performance or concurrency issues, and proposing solutions. Supporting support engineers with complex problems. Taking ownership of protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of organizational data and systems. Ensuring all individual contributions follow Elastic’s Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF). Participating in mandatory role-based training for data protection, data privacy, and system resilience.
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