---
title: 'Principal Java Engineer - Distributed Systems, Serverless - Elasticsearch at Referral Board'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/principal-java-engineer-distributed-systems-serverless-elasticsearch-referral-teyak08nxt2g'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-08'
---

# Principal Java Engineer - Distributed Systems, Serverless - Elasticsearch at Referral Board

- **Company:** Referral Board
- **Location:** United States
- **Compensation:** $160k–$304k
- **Posted:** 2026-07-20
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/referralsuseonly/jobs/8074222

## Job description

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.

What Is The Role:

We are on the lookout for a Principal Software Engineer to join our Elasticsearch - Distributed Systems team and focus on how Elasticsearch provides scale, performance, and resilience, especially in the context of our Serverless offering. You will be tackling deep distributed systems challenges in how nodes in an Elasticsearch cluster communicate, and how data are indexed, allocated, and managed across nodes.

What You Will Be Doing:

- Leveraging your deep distributed systems expertise to design, build, and operate core pieces of our next-generation Serverless Elasticsearch offering, directly impacting the experience of customers worldwide.
- Improving Elasticsearch’s components that support concurrent and consistent indexing across multiple machines.
- Maintaining our cluster coordination system to keep performance high even though nodes come and go from the cluster and data moves around, while maintaining the safety and liveness properties of the system as a whole.
- Pushing the limits on the number of shards, nodes, and petabytes that Elasticsearch can handle today.
- Looking into all kinds of issues, including performance or concurrency issues, and proposing solutions.
- Supporting our support engineers with the harder problems.
- Owning operational investigations end-to-end, until performance or stability issues are successfully resolved.

What You Bring:

- You have a deep background in distributed systems and consensus algorithms.
- You have strong skills in core Java and are conversant in the standard library of data structures and concurrency constructs, as well as newer language features.
- You have a deep technical proficiency in algorithms.
- You have experience building large-scale distributed systems, rather than making use of off-the-shelf services.
- You have experience building and debugging complex features with a broad impact, running on multiple machines.
- You are able to own projects from beginning to end. This covers both technical design and working with others to develop needed components.
- You have experience managing projects involving multiple engineers.
- You have a proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code, while still owning the final outcomes.
- 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 results in a distributed team by leveraging asynchronous, direct, and transparent communication.

Bonus Points:

- Data stores
- Search, analytics, Lucene
- Strong knowledge of the JDK
- Asynchronous event-driven network frameworks such as Netty

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 new hires in this role is listed below.  In select locations (including Seattle WA, Los Angeles CA, the San Francisco Bay Area CA, and the New York City Metro Area), an alternate range may apply as specified 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.

An employee's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, performance, and business or organizational needs.

Elastic believes that employees should have the opportunity to share in the value that we create together for our shareholders. Therefore, in addition to cash compensation, this role is currently eligible to participate in Elastic's stock program.  Our total rewards package also includes a company-matched 401k with dollar-for-dollar matching up to 6% of eligible earnings, along with a range of other benefits offered with a holistic emphasis on employee well-being.

The typical starting salary range for this role is: $159,800—$252,800 USD

The typical starting salary range for this role in the select locations listed above is: $191,900—$303,500 USD

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.

We strive to have parity of benefits across regions and while regulations differ from place to place, we believe taking care of our people is the right thing to 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 minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave

Different people approach problems differently. We need that. Elastic is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. 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 candidate_accessibility@elastic.co We will reply to your request within 24 business hours of submission.

Applicants have rights under Federal Employment Laws, view posters linked below: https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/legacy/files/fmlaen.pdf Poster; [Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision](https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ofccp/pdf/pay-transp_%20English_formattedESQA508c.pdf) Poster; https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/legacy/files/eppabw.pdf Poster and [Know Your Rights](https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OFCCP/regs/compliance/posters/pdf/22-088_EEOC_KnowYourRights.pdf) (Poster)

Elasticsearch develops and distributes encryption software and technology that is subject to U.S. export controls and licensing requirements for individuals who are located in or are nationals of the following sanctioned countries and regions: Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, the Crimea Region of Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic (“DNR”), and the Luhansk People’s Republic (“LNR”). If you are located in or are a national of one of the listed countries or regions, an export license may be required as a condition of your employment in this role. Please note that national origin and/or nationality do not affect eligibility for employment with Elastic.

Please see [here](https://www.elastic.co/legal/applicant-privacy-statement) for our Privacy Statement.

## About Referral Board

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Elastic builds the Elasticsearch platform for real-time search, observability, and generative AI, helping organizations turn data into actionable results.
- **Entity Type**: Public (NYSE: ESTC)
- **Headquarters**: Mountain View, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2012
- **Founders**: Shay Banon (creator of Elasticsearch), Steven Schuurman, Uri Boness, Simon Willnauer (co-founders of Elastic)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Enterprise software, search technology, observability, security, generative AI infrastructure
- **Target customers**: B2B – enterprises, SMBs, developers, and IT teams across all industries
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “We help you turn endless data possibilities into real results with the power of Search AI.” [elastic.co](https://www.elastic.co/about)

## Products & Services
- **Elasticsearch**: Distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine (open source / SaaS)
- **Kibana**: Data visualization dashboard for Elasticsearch
- **Elastic Observability**: Unified monitoring for logs, metrics, and traces
- **Elastic Security**: SIEM, endpoint security, and threat detection
- **Elastic Generative AI (Search AI)**: AI-powered search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed in provided sources (public company; latest financials available via SEC filings)
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue – Not available in provided search results
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not disclosed in provided sources
- **Growth Signals**: Global workforce spanning more than 40 countries and 100 nationalities; strong emphasis on distributed-first culture and continuous expansion of Search AI capabilities [elastic.co](https://www.elastic.co/careers)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Open-source foundation** with a vibrant community and extensive plugin ecosystem
- **Unified platform** for search, observability, security, and generative AI on a single stack
- **Distributed-by-design architecture** that scales horizontally for petabyte-scale data
- **Strong brand recognition** as the de facto standard for enterprise search and log analytics

## Strategic Focus
- **Search AI**: Integrating generative AI and large language models directly into search workflows
- **Observability & Security**: Deepening capabilities in application performance monitoring and threat detection
- **Cloud growth**: Expanding Elastic Cloud offerings and multi-cloud support
- **Developer experience**: Improving APIs, SDKs, and tooling for developers

## Why Work Here
- **Distributed-by-design culture** – remote, hybrid, and in-person roles available; employees come from over 40 countries [elastic.co](https://www.elastic.co/careers)
- **Global inclusion** – “We don’t do molds. Come as you are.” Emphasis on diversity and belonging [elastic.co](https://www.elastic.co/careers)
- **Competitive benefits** – health coverage, parental leave, retirement benefits, and support for life’s important moments [elastic.co](https://www.elastic.co/careers)
- **Transparent hiring process** – clear stages including application, technical assessment, department interviews, and decision [elastic.co](https://www.elastic.co/careers/how-we-hire)
- **Referral program** – employees can refer former coworkers or friends for open roles [elastic.co](https://www.elastic.co/careers/how-we-hire)

## Sources
1. [Elastic About Page](https://www.elastic.co/about)
2. [Elastic Careers Page](https://www.elastic.co/careers)
3. [Elastic How We Hire](https://www.elastic.co/careers/how-we-hire)
4. [Greenhouse Referral Board (Elastic)](https://boards.greenhouse.io/referralsuseonly)
5. [RemoteOtter – Referral Board Company (aggregated jobs)](https://remoteotter.com/company/referral-board)

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