Principal Data Scientist, Elastic

Search, Workchat

$159.8-303.5k

Salary applicable to candidates in Seattle WA, Los Angeles CA, San Francisco Bay Area CA, and New York City Metro Area only and may vary in further locations. + Stock Program

Python

Elasticsearch

Pandas

PyTorch

Semantic

Senior and Expert level

Remote from Spain, UK, US

More information about location

Open source platform powering search, observability, security, and more

Job no longer available

Open source platform powering search, observability, security, and more

1001+ employees

B2BAnalyticsSaaS

Job no longer available

$159.8-303.5k

Salary applicable to candidates in Seattle WA, Los Angeles CA, San Francisco Bay Area CA, and New York City Metro Area only and may vary in further locations. + Stock Program

Python

Elasticsearch

Pandas

PyTorch

Semantic

Senior and Expert level

Remote from Spain, UK, US

More information about location

1001+ employees

B2BAnalyticsSaaS

Company mission

To help turn endless data possibilities into real results with the power of Search AI.

Job

Company

Role

Who you are

8+ years of confirmed experience building and applying NLP to production use cases
8+ years of professional software development experience in Python
Experience in Generative AI, Retrieval Augmented Generation, and information retrieval
Experience with libraries and frameworks such as PyTorch, transformers, and Pandas
Experience using collaborative notebook-based workflows (e.g. Jupyter) for prototyping and knowledge sharing
Expertise in AI/ML quality evaluation and improvement, including balancing tuning techniques with cost/benefit tradeoffs
Self motivated, collaborative style, open communicator, experience in a distributed team
Good attention to detail and highly organized
Real passion for data, analysis and achieving excellence
Experience with Elasticsearch is useful
An academic background in the domain is also a plus

What the job involves

The Search Data Science team is responsible for developing and integrating statistical tools and machine learning models within the Search domain in support of semantic search, RAG, agentic search, and chat applications
As a Data Scientist in this area, you will work closely with our Product teams to lead the innovation, incubation, and prototyping phases of how to evolve and transform our AI/ML driven Search experiences and solutions with a focus on quickly bringing new ideas to production and into the hands of our customers
Your primary focus will be driving forward research and development in support of improving semantic search with proprietary models and customized open source models, developing techniques and models for query and document understanding, implementing RAG and LLM-driven search experiences, and developing tooling to help customers design and implement successful end-to-end RAG systems
Furthermore, you’ll be investigating aspects of modern agentic search including reasoning engines, prompt engineering techniques, query understanding, and more
Doing this requires exploring and benchmarking new open source models, and existing proprietary Elastic models, while keeping up to date with the latest major advancements in the fields of NLP and information retrieval
Explore, select and benchmark open source and Elastic proprietary models
Implementing RAG and other LLM-based search experiences
Designing evaluation protocols for semantic search, tool selection, and generation in LLM-based search experiences
Keeping up-to-date with the most significant recent developments in the field of NLP and information retrieval
Engage with the NLP and information retrieval communities (blogs, documentation, Python examples, conference talks, academic papers, etc.)
Collaborate with cross-functional teams of data scientists, engineers, and product managers
Promote knowledge sharing and collaboration in a distributed team

Our take

Organizations are dealing with exploding data volumes increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, and the growing expectation tha ttechnology should help act on problems, not just report them. Ai is moving from experimentation into real operations, especially in security and observability where speed and context are critical. So now, both enterprises and governments are looking for simpler, shared platforms that sale easily and reduce complexity rather than add to it.

And Elastic sits at the intersection of these needs with its Search AI Platform that helps organizations turn large amounts of structured and unstructured data into clear insights and actiontions across search, security, and observability. Elastic's strength lies in its open, flexible approach, which breaks down data silos and provides a context people and AI systems need to make daster, better decisions. The goal is straightforward: help teams see what's happening, understand it quickly, and respond confidently.

Recently, the company worked with CISA to deliver a unified, cloud-based SIEM for US federal agencies, this highlights strong trust in Elastic's security and scalability. Alongside this, its AWS Agentic AI Specialization also reflects leadership in making autonomous AI system practical and reliable. Together, these milestones position Elastic well for the future, as organizations increasingly rely on shared platforms and intelligent systems to manage ris, complexity, and growth.

Freddie

Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle

Insights

Top investors

8% employee growth in 12 months

Glassdoor (3.9)

Company

Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)

Jul 2016

$58m

SERIES D

Jun 2014

$70m

SERIES C

Total funding: $162m

Company benefits

Toast to your health: Fully paid health coverage for you and your family, in many locations.
Craft your calendar: Flexible location and schedule for most roles.
Create space for you: Distributed by design workforce, plus generous number of vacation days each year.
Embrace parenthood: Minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave, plus generous family formation benefits.
Give back your time: 40 hours each year to use toward volunteering with organizations and causes you’re passionate about.
Amplify your impact: Double your charitable giving — we match donations up to $1500 USD (or local currency equivalent).

Company HQ

Union Square, San Francisco, CA

Leadership

Ashutosh Kulkarni

(CEO)

Ashutosh joined Elastic in 2021 as CPO, becoming CEO in 2022. Prior to this, he was an EVP and CPO of Enterprise at McAfee, a Senior VP and GM of Web Performance and Web Security at Akamai Technologies, and a Senior VP and GM of Informatica Cloud at Informatica.

Shay Banon

(Co-Founder & CTO)

Shay co-founded Elastic in 2012 and has served as the CTO since.

Navam Welihinda

(CFO)

Prior to joining Elastic in 2025, Navam was the CFO at Grammarly. He also spent nearly 8 years at HashiCorp as VP of Finance and CFO and was the Head of Finance, Compose at IBM for 1 year.

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