Senior Java Software Engineer - Search Inference - Platform

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 Senior Java Developer to join our Elasticsearch team and drive our work on the Inference API in Elasticsearch. The Elasticsearch Inference API is the integration layer between Elasticsearch and external machine learning services including Elastic's own Elastic Inference Service (EIS), third-party providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, Cohere, Google), and self-hosted models. It powers features like semantic search, reranking, and generative AI across Elastic Cloud and in hosted environments. You'll maintain and develop the plugin framework and REST API with your work spanning protocol design, streaming, async execution, billing integration, and with a tight collaboration with the wider inference team and the Kibana team. What You Will Be Doing • Build and maintain integrations with internal systems and external inference providers, including schema negotiation, streaming (SSE), and error normalisation • Contribute to the inference plugin's internal architecture: task settings, chunking strategies, rate limiting, and provider-level configuration • Review open source contributions to the codebase and work with third party engineers to ensure their contributions meet our technology standards • Participate in on-call rotation for inference-related incidents • Write thorough tests: unit tests using ESTestCase, YAML-based REST integration tests, and rolling-upgrade tests What You Bring • 5+ years of production Java experience, with experience contributing to a large, established Java codebase. You know core Java and are conversant in the standard library of data structures and concurrency constructs, as well as newer language features. • Experience crafting ergonomic APIs and the ability to reason through tradeoffs. • Experience with low-level Java such as concurrency, parallelism, classloaders, etc. • 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 • Knowledge of JDK internals: modules, the Java memory model, garbage collection, database load, caching techniques, etc. • Experience with ML systems • Contributions to and ownership of open source projects • Knowledge of Java build tools (Gradle, Maven, etc), with a strong preference for Gradle experience. • Experience working in a platform team or developer productivity team 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 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 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: Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Poster; Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision Poster; Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) Poster and Know Your Rights (Poster) Elasticsearch develops and distributes technology and information that is subject to U.S. and other countries’ 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, Syria, or Russia, including the Ukrainian territories annexed by Russia (The Crimea region of Ukraine, The Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), The Luhansk People's Republic (LNR), Kherson or Zaporizhzhia). 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 for our Privacy Statement.