# Principal Software Engineer - Performance Tuning - Elasticsearch at Elastic

- Company: Elastic
- What the company does: Power insights and outcomes with The Elasticsearch Platform. See into your data and find answers that matter with enterprise solutions designed to help you accelerate time to insight. Try Elastic toda... Backed by NEA and Amplify.
- Company website: https://www.elastic.co/
- Type: Startups
- Level: Principal and up
- Location: United States
- Work setup: On-site
- Posted: 2026-08-18
- Apply by: 2026-10-14
- Apply: https://jobs.elastic.co/jobs?gh_jid=8119454&gh_jid=8119454
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/elastic-principal-software-engineer-performance-tuning-elasticsearch/

## About the role

Elasticsearch powers search, observability, and AI retrieval (RAG) for the world's largest organizations. 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 optimization and predictability of Elasticsearch performance, partnering with area-specific teams to unlock the full potential of our software.

## What they're looking for

- 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 optimization, 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 organization
- 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

Tags: Platform - Elasticsearch