Senior Java Software Engineer - Search Inference Platform

About the role

Elastic is looking for a Senior Java Developer to join its Elasticsearch team and drive work on the Inference API. The Inference API is the integration layer between Elasticsearch and external machine learning services, including Elastic's own Elastic Inference Service, third-party providers and self-hosted models, and powers semantic search, reranking and generative AI. You will maintain and develop the plugin framework and REST API, covering protocol design, streaming, async execution and billing integration, in close collaboration with the inference team and the Kibana team.

Key responsibilities

• 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 and work with third-party engineers so they meet Elastic's technology standards
• Take part in on-call rotation for inference-related incidents
• Write thorough tests: unit tests with ESTestCase, YAML-based REST integration tests and rolling-upgrade tests

Required profile

• 5+ years of production Java experience, including work on a large, established Java codebase
• Experience crafting ergonomic APIs and reasoning through trade-offs
• Proven track record of using AI to speed up development, debug complex systems and optimise code, while owning the final outcomes
• Ability to collaborate across functions and teams and switch between projects and codebases as priorities change
• Ability to work autonomously in a distributed team, driving decisions through asynchronous, direct and transparent communication

Required skills

• Core Java, the standard library of data structures and concurrency constructs, and newer language features
• Low-level Java: concurrency, parallelism, classloaders
• Bonus: knowledge of JDK internals (modules, memory model, garbage collection, caching)
• Bonus: Java build tools (Gradle, Maven), with a strong preference for Gradle
• Bonus: experience with ML systems, open source contributions, and platform or developer productivity teams

What we offer

• Base salary only, with no variable component; typical range €55,800 to €88,300
• Flexible locations and schedules for many roles
• Generous vacation days and health coverage for you and your family in many locations
• Parental leave of at least 16 weeks
• Volunteer time and matching for donations