Principal Software Engineer (Java) - Security - Elasticsearch

Overview

In this role you lead security architecture for Elasticsearch, delivering high-performance authentication, authorization, and tenant isolation at scale. You will shape core security features and collaborate with cross-functional teams to embed security from the outset. You’ll drive vulnerability management with the InfoSec team and mentor engineers toward security-first practices. This is a chance to influence secure data access in a distributed, cloud-based search platform leveraging AI-driven tooling.

Pay / Benefits

• competitive pay
• health coverage for you and family
• flexible locations and schedules
• generous vacation days
• donation matching up to 2000
• volunteer hours yearly

Responsibilities

• Own security initiatives from architecture to production, delivering new critical features
• Lead design, planning, and execution of major security components inside the Elasticsearch core engine
• Develop foundational security models for complex features
• Optimize security performance at scale in distributed systems
• Apply cryptographic solutions addressing customer use cases
• Ensure robust data isolation within shared infrastructure
• Monitor and adopt latest security best practices (authentication, identity, cryptography, data access)
• Collaborate across teams to bake security into new customer features from the start
• Drive vulnerability management with InfoSec to proactively identify and remediate risks
• Leverage AI-driven tools to automate vulnerability triage and streamline security workflows
• Mentor and coach engineers to foster security-first development

Key requirements

• Deep knowledge of Java internals and JVM memory management
• Experience with high-performance, thread-safe, lock-free code
• Proven track record designing scalable authorization systems (RBAC/ABAC) and token validation pipelines
• Solid understanding of distributed systems security (node-to-node trust, zero-trust transport, partition tolerance)
• Knowledge of edge identity protocols (OAuth 2.0, SAML)
• Experience using AI to accelerate development and debugging while owning outcomes
• Ability to work autonomously and lead a distributed team with asynchronous, transparent communication
• Experience mapping engine-level controls to security standards is a plus
• Experience with data stores or search engines internals is a plus

• collaboration across functions
• mentoring and coaching
• autonomous decision-making
• Java and JVM expertise
• concurrency and memory management
• RBAC/ABAC design and token validation pipelines

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