Distinguished Engineer - Search in London

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.

As a recognized leader in the search space, Elastic’s Search team connects our core technologies, from Elasticsearch to our GPU-based inference service, to real‑world business needs, enabling our customers to build market‑leading applications and address critical business needs. We build everything from foundational infrastructure that extends Elasticsearch to user‑facing features like Agent Builder that enable customers to create powerful search and Agentic experiences.

You’ll be the technical leader shaping the architecture and vision for Elastic’s Search products, ensuring that using Elasticsearch for building applications, Agents, or as a context engineering Platform is easy to get started with and operate, while preserving the flexibility to configure every aspect of search & relevance. We are looking for a technology and engineering leader (Distinguished Engineer level) to help us realize our goals. The team is looking for someone with success using and building search technology that powers critical applications.

What You Will Be Doing

• Own and evolve the architecture and roadmap for Search, Context Engineering, and Agent Building.
• Define and enhance the end‑to‑end developer and user experience across use‑cases.
• Collaborate with the team owning Elasticsearch and other engineering teams across Elastic to align priorities and make smart technology and design choices.
• Lead technical discussions with partners and customers to ensure our solutions meet real needs.
• Review and advise implementation designs.
• Evangelize the Search roadmap internally and externally.
• Mentor engineers and foster technical excellence.

What You Bring

• Proven experience as technical leader for large, complex engineering teams and projects.
• Deep expertise in Java/JVM, search technologies, context engineering, experience building complex distributed systems, or understanding of the inner workings of databases/data stores.
• Passion about Search.
• Ability to reason about architecture at both high and detailed levels.
• Hands‑on experience: comfortable coding, reviewing PRs, and staying close to the team’s work.
• Excellent communicator, collaborator, and problem solver.
• Operates with high autonomy.

Bonus Points

• Extensive technical leadership in search.
• Experience with the Elastic Stack.
• Built search products at scale.
• Open‑source project leadership or major contributions.

Additional Information – We Take Care of Our People

As a distributed company, diversity drives our identity. Whether you’re looking to launch a new career or grow an existing one, Elastic is the type of company where you can balance great work with great life. Your age is only a number. It doesn’t matter if you’re just out of college or your children are; we need you for what you can do.

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 a minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave.

Different people approach problems differently. We need that. 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. To request an accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please email. We will reply to your request within 24 business hours of submission.

Compensation for this role is in the form of base salary. This role does not have a variable compensation component. The typical starting salary range for this role is listed below. These ranges represent the lowest to highest salary we reasonably and in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range, and the ranges may be modified in the future. The typical starting salary range for this role is: $240,600—$380,700 CAD.