Principal Software Developer - Performance Tuning - Elasticsearch (Elasticsearch)

Location: Canada

Salary: $154,000–$243,600 CAD per year, plus stock program eligibility and an RRSP with dollar-for-dollar matching up to 6% of eligible earnings.

Company

hirify.global develops the hirify.global Search AI Platform for search, security, observability, and AI retrieval at scale.

What you will do

• Lead architectural and code-level performance engineering initiatives for hirify.globalsearch from design through production.
• Develop performance models and methodologies for complex distributed systems.
• Profile system behavior and identify bottlenecks in logging, metrics, vector search, and ES|QL.
• Design benchmarks and regression detection for stateful and Serverless architectures.
• Build AI-assisted optimization harnesses for profiling, hypothesis testing, and benchmarking.
• Collaborate across teams, mentor engineers, and promote performance-focused development.

Requirements

• Deep knowledge of Java internals, JVM memory management, concurrency, thread-safe code, and lock-free programming.
• Proven experience profiling and optimizing distributed systems with tools such as flamegraphs, JMH, and Rally.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems architecture, partition tolerance, cluster state propagation, and large-scale data-store scaling.
• Experience using AI or advanced tooling to accelerate optimization, debug performance issues, and automate benchmarking workflows.
• Ability to collaborate across functions, work autonomously, and operate effectively in a distributed team.

Nice to have

• Experience integrating high-performance C++, Rust, or SIMD-accelerated libraries into Java applications.
• Knowledge of storage engine performance, index modes, or vector search optimization.
• Experience defining performance SLAs and working on the internals of a large-scale data store or search engine.

Culture & Benefits

• Flexible locations and schedules are available for many roles.
• Health coverage is available for employees and families in many locations.
• Generous vacation allowance and at least 16 weeks of parental leave.
• Up to $2,000 or local equivalent is matched annually for donations and service.
• Up to 40 hours per year are available for volunteer projects.
• Work follows hirify.global's Secure Software Development Framework and applicable privacy and security standards.