Principal Software Engineer - Storage Engine - Elasticsearch
Referral Board
$159,800–$252,800
Jul 19, 2026
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Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A principal-level engineering role focused on the core storage and query engine within Elasticsearch, with day-to-day work spanning architectural leadership, performance optimization of indexing layouts and serialization formats, and advancing query processing for observability workloads such as logs and metrics. The position suits a seasoned engineer with deep Java expertise and a background in high-performance database or search engine internals who is comfortable driving technical direction across a globally distributed, fully remote team.
Principal level · Remote · Full-time
Pay in the description: $159,800–$252,800
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 11,300 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 6,800–20,300
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
What the occupation pays Median $138,970 (middle half $107,524–$175,762). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (5)
Two salary bands are given: the general US range is $159,800–$252,800/year; a higher band of $191,900–$303,500/year applies in Seattle WA, Los Angeles CA, the San Francisco Bay Area CA, and the New York City Metro Area. The lower (general) band is reported in the compensation fields.
The data-storage technology requirement lists Elasticsearch, Solr, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Prometheus as explicit alternatives — the JD asks for experience with 'one or more' of these, so they are captured as alternatives on a single skill rather than separate gates.
ES|QL (the query language), GitHub, and CI/CD appear in context or bonus sections and are marked preferred accordingly.
No minimum total years of experience is stated; the role is assessed as Principal based on the explicit 'Principal Software Engineer' title, org-wide technical leadership scope, cross-organizational initiative ownership, and SME/mentor responsibilities described.
Caller marked this a fully-remote role — scored against the national candidate pool.
Read the full posting
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