Engineering Manager - Search Management - Elasticsearch

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. The Elastic Search AI Platform, used by more than 50% of the Fortune 500, brings together the precision of search and the intelligence of AI to enable everyone to accelerate the results that matter. By taking advantage of all structured and unstructured data — securing and protecting private information more effectively — Elastic’s complete, cloud‑based solutions for search, security, and observability help organizations deliver on the promise of AI.

The Elasticsearch team is in charge of building the core platform that powers search for Elastic’s customers and users for e-commerce, observability, SIEM, and more. This globally‑distributed team of experienced engineers focuses on delivering a robust and feature‑rich search experience, including contributing to improving the search experience in Lucene, evolving the search tier of our Serverless architecture, and building search functionality in our new piped query language, ES|QL. This is an experienced team lead role where you will be working with the team that delivers these search‑focused enhancements to the Elasticsearch platform. The goal of this team is to build a high‑quality, fast, and relevant foundation for search within Elasticsearch. You will participate in roadmap and project planning efforts and will have ownership for delivering it. You’ll be participating in project management efforts as the teams complete plans together with the Tech Lead and Product Manager.

Our company is distributed by intention. We hire the best engineers we can find wherever they are, whoever they are. We collaborate across continents every day over email, GitHub, Zoom, and Slack. At our best, we write fast, scalable and intuitive software. We believe that the best way to do that is to empower individual engineers, code review every change, decide big things by consensus, and strive for incremental improvements.

We believe that engineering complex, pluggable software that is built to last the test of time is both tricky and exciting. Doing so requires a team of diverse individuals, with sharp minds and the ability to empathize with our users, working together with mutual respect and a common mission. We care deeply about giving you full ownership of what you’re working on. Our company fundamentally believes great minds achieve greatness when they are set free and are surrounded and challenged by their peers, which is clearly visible throughout our organization. At Elastic, hierarchy does not determine how decisions get made. We feel that anyone needs to be in the position to comment on anything, regardless of their role within the company.

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• Manage, mentor and lead a globally distributed team of Java engineers working on search functionality within Elasticsearch.
  
• Lead the efficient delivery of search enhancements with regular releases of Elasticsearch, ensuring high quality and innovative feature development.
  
• Work with our product managers to define requirements.
  
• Foster a culture of mutual respect, collaboration and consensus‑based decision‑making.
  
• Stay true to the principles of software development as adopted by our team.
  
• Build roadmaps and lead prioritization; balance the right amount of structure and planning for a fast‑paced engineering team.
  
• Identify resource requirements and help drive recruitment of high quality colleagues.
  
• Support the development and training of direct reports through regular 1:1s and career conversations.
  
• Be a great person to work with, somebody who sincerely empathizes with others.
  

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• Experience leading distributed teams of software engineers.
  
• Ability to work in a distributed team throughout the world.
  
• Strong communication skills, both verbal and written, with the ability to drive conversations across multiple teams to a conclusion.
  
• Previous experience working with collaborators outside of Engineering.
  
• You know and care about writing performant software and have traced and fixed performance issues yourself.
  
• Ability to work in a fast‑paced environment.
  
• Ability to work independently.
  

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• Significant experience as a hands‑on software engineer so you understand the core principles of the engineering work that is going on in your team.
  
• Experience working in Lucene or Solr.
  
• Open Source experience.
  
• Prior professional exposure to Elasticsearch.
  
• Hands‑on experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
  

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• 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 $2,000 (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 a minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave.
  

Security & Privacy Responsibilities: Take ownership of protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of organizational data and systems by following applicable privacy and security policies, standards, and procedures. Ensure that all individual contributions follow Elastic’s Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF). Proactively participate in mandatory role‑based training to ensure personal technical execution consistently aligns with the highest standards of data protection, data privacy, and system resilience.

Elastic is an equal‑opportunity employer and is committed to creating an inclusive culture that celebrates different perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other basis protected by federal, state, or local law, ordinance, or regulation. We welcome individuals with disabilities and strive to create an accessible and inclusive experience for all individuals. xcfaprz To request an accommodation during the application or recruiting process, please email Applicants have rights under Federal Employment Laws and can view the following posters linked below: Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Poster; Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Poster; and Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) Poster.