Principal Software Engineer (Elasticsearch)

Location: Spain

Salary: €80,400–€127,200 EUR gross annual base salary

Company

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

What you will do

• Lead performance engineering initiatives from architecture and technical design through production delivery.
• Develop performance models and methodologies for complex distributed systems.
• Profile hirify.globalsearch and analyze bottlenecks across logging, metrics, vector search, and ES|QL.
• Build robust benchmarks and regression detection for stateful and serverless architectures.
• Design AI-assisted optimization harnesses for profiling, hypothesis testing, and benchmarking automation.
• Collaborate across teams, promote performance-first development, and mentor engineers.

Requirements

• Deep knowledge of Java internals, JVM memory management, concurrency models, and high-performance thread-safe or lock-free code.
• Proven experience profiling and optimizing distributed systems using 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 debug complex performance issues and automate benchmarking workflows.
• Ability to work autonomously and collaborate across projects, codebases, and distributed teams through asynchronous communication.

Nice to have

• Experience integrating high-performance native libraries such as C++, Rust, or SIMD-accelerated code into Java applications.
• Knowledge of storage engine performance, index modes, or vector search optimization.
• Experience defining Performance SLAs and success criteria for distributed systems.
• Experience with the internals of a large-scale data store or search engine.

Culture & Benefits

• Distributed work environment with flexible locations and schedules for many roles.
• Health coverage for employees and families in many locations.
• Generous vacation allowance and at least 16 weeks of parental leave.
• Up to $2,000 or local-currency equivalent matched for financial donations.
• Up to 40 paid hours each year for volunteer projects.
• Commitment to inclusive culture, accessibility, and equal employment opportunity.