Consulting Architect - Search

About this role

<div class="content-intro"><p>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.</p></div><h3><strong>What is The Role</strong></h3> <p data-path-to-node="1">As a Senior Search Consulting Architect, you will serve as a hands-on technical authority and trusted implementation leader helping our enterprise customers unlock the full potential of Elasticsearch. Working directly with customer engineering teams and technical leadership, you will design, optimize, and scale complex Elasticsearch cluster topologies that transform application search performance, data retrieval infrastructure, and AI-powered semantic search capabilities.</p> <p data-path-to-node="2">You will bridge the gap between business requirements and distributed systems engineering, collaborating closely with internal Services Delivery leads, Sales Engineers, and customer architects. In this high-impact role, you will lead critical cluster deployments, drive performance tuning engagements, and mentor technical staff to ensure long-term operational success for key accounts.</p> <h3 data-path-to-node="3"><strong data-path-to-node="3" data-index-in-node="0">What You Will Do</strong></h3> <ul data-path-to-node="4"> <li> <p data-path-to-node="4,0,0"><strong data-path-to-node="4,0,0" data-index-in-node="0">Elasticsearch Core Architecture:</strong> Translate business and functional requirements into highly resilient, scalable search architectures built natively on distributed Elasticsearch environments.</p> </li> <li> <p data-path-to-node="4,1,0"><strong data-path-to-node="4,1,0" data-index-in-node="0">Cluster Design &amp; Governance:</strong> Lead technical execution and node blueprinting for enterprise customer engagements—including capacity planning, custom mappings, shard strategy, Index Lifecycle Management (ILM), and cross-cluster replication (CCR/CCS).</p> </li> <li> <p data-path-to-node="4,2,0"><strong data-path-to-node="4,2,0" data-index-in-node="0">Advanced Vector Search &amp; AI Engineering:</strong> Deploy and operationalize semantic search implementations utilizing Elasticsearch’s native vector capabilities, including kNN, ELSER, hybrid retrieval, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines.</p> </li> <li> <p data-path-to-node="4,3,0"><strong data-path-to-node="4,3,0" data-index-in-node="0">Performance Tuning &amp; Optimization:</strong> Profile, benchmark, and tune distributed search and indexing performance to meet demanding SLAs, optimizing JVM heap, garbage collection, caching layers, and Apache Lucene segment merging.</p> </li> <li> <p data-path-to-node="4,4,0"><strong data-path-to-node="4,4,0" data-index-in-node="0">High-Throughput Ingestion:</strong> Build robust ingestion pipelines and bulk indexing strategies handling high-volume workloads while optimizing cluster state performance and thread pools.</p> </li> <li> <p data-path-to-node="4,5,0"><strong data-path-to-node="4,5,0" data-index-in-node="0">Customer Engagement &amp; Delivery:</strong> Serve as the lead technical consultant during client engagements, leading technical kickoff meetings, architectural reviews, and hands-on migration efforts.</p> </li> <li> <p data-path-to-node="4,6,0"><strong data-path-to-node="4,6,0" data-index-in-node="0">Field Insights &amp; Feedback:</strong> Identify edge cases, bugs, and common architectural hurdles in field deployments, sharing structured feedback with Product Management and Core Support.</p> </li> <li> <p data-path-to-node="4,7,0"><strong data-path-to-node="4,7,0" data-index-in-node="0">Internal Mentorship:</strong> Document implementation patterns, contribute to standard delivery frameworks, and mentor team members to cultivate a culture of technical excellence.</p> </li> </ul> <h3 data-path-to-node="5"><strong data-path-to-node="5" data-index-in-node="0">What You Bring</strong></h3> <ul data-path-to-node="6"> <li> <p data-path-to-node="6,0,0"><strong data-path-to-node="6,0,0" data-index-in-node="0">5+ years</strong> as a Solutions Architect, Lead Engineer, or Senior Systems Consultant with hands-on, deep technical expertise specifically focused on Elasticsearch in production environments.</p> </li> <li> <p data-path-to-node="6,1,0"><strong data-path-to-node="6,1,0" data-index-in-node="0">Elasticsearch Internals:</strong> Solid understanding of distributed systems principles as applied to Elasticsearch, including node roles (master, data, ingest, ML), Apache Lucene indexing mechanics, and cluster state management.</p> </li> <li> <p data-path-to-node="6,2,0"><strong data-path-to-node="6,2,0" data-index-in-node="0">AI-Powered Search Experience:</strong> Proven track record of implementing semantic search solutions using Elasticsearch’s native ML nodes, dense/sparse vector fields, and modern NLP framework integrations.</p> </li> <li> <p data-path-to-node="6,3,0"><strong data-path-to-node="6,3,0" data-index-in-node="0">Cloud-Native Infrastructure:</strong> Practical experience deploying and managing Elasticsearch workloads on public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) using Docker, Kubernetes, or Terraform.</p> </li> <li> <p data-path-to-node="6,4,0"><strong data-path-to-node="6,4,0" data-index-in-node="0">Polyglot Coding:</strong> Proficiency in at least one modern programming language (e.g., Java, Python, Go) with experience using official Elasticsearch client libraries.</p> </li> <li> <p data-path-to-node="6,5,0"><strong data-path-to-node="6,5,0" data-index-in-node="0">Technical Communication:</strong> Strong presentation and technical writing skills, with a proven ability to guide developer teams, customer architects, and IT managers through complex technical choices.</p> </li> <li> <p data-path-to-node="6,6,0"><strong data-path-to-node="6,6,0" data-index-in-node="0">Education:</strong> Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical industry experience.</p> </li> <li> <p data-path-to-node="6,7,0"><strong data-path-to-node="6,7,0" data-index-in-node="0">Global Mindset:</strong> Comfortable working across distributed teams and traveling to customer sites as required for key project milestones.</p> </li> </ul><div class="content-pay-transparency"><div class="pay-input"><div class="description"><p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br>Compensation for this role is in the form of base salary.&nbsp; This role does not have a variable compensation component.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The typical starting salary range for new hires in this role is listed below.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">These ranges represent </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">the lowest to highest salary we reasonably and in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting.&nbsp; We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range, and the ranges may be modified in the future.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">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.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: