Search - Principal Data Scientist

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 :

The Search Data team is responsible for developing and integrating statistical tools and machine learning models within the Search domain in support of semantic search, RAG, query understanding, and ranking and recommendations. As a Principal Data Scientist, 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 understanding, increasing ranking flexibility though ranking and recommendation models and related tooling, 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.

If this sounds interesting, we would love to hear from you! Please include whatever info you believe is relevant : resume, GitHub profile, code samples, blog posts and writing samples, links to personal projects, etc.

What You Will Be Doing :

• Explore, select and benchmark open source and Elastic proprietary models
• Experimenting, evaluating and testing use cases for Generative AI including RAG, chat and agentic search
• 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

What You Bring :

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.

Different people approach problems differently. We need that. Elastic is an equal opportunity / affirmative action employer committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. 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 country 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, Russia, Syria, the Crimea Region of Ukraine, the Donetsk People's Republic ("DNR"), and the Luhansk People's Republic ("LNR"). 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 .

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Compensation for this role is in the form of base salary. This role does not have a variable compensation component.

The typical starting salary range for new hires in this role is listed below. 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.

These ranges represent the lowest to highest salary we reasonably and in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range, and the ranges may be modified in the future.

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.

Elastic believes that employees should have the opportunity to share in the value that we create together for our shareholders. Therefore, in addition to cash compensation, this role is currently eligible to participate in Elastic's stock program. Our total rewards package also includes a company-matched 401k with dollar-for-dollar matching up to 6% of eligible earnings, along with a range of other benefits offered with a holistic emphasis on employee well-being.

The typical starting salary range for this role is :

159,800-$252,800 USD

The typical starting salary range for this role in the select locations listed above is :

191,900-$303,500 USD

Salary : $191,900 - $303,500