TELECOMMUTE Staff Software Engineer - Elasticsearch Platform

Role: Staff Software Engineer – Elasticsearch Platform Location: Chicago, Illinois, United States (Remote)Duration: Long Term Contract Job DescriptionAbout the RoleAs a Staff Software Engineer, you’ll lead the design and evolution of a real-time search platform—the engine powering creator discovery across 30M profiles and billions of posts.You’ll architect and maintain Elasticsearch clusters, build high-performance APIs in Go, and ensure the scalability and reliability of search at massive scale. This role blends hands-on development with technical leadership, guiding architecture decisions and mentoring engineers to deliver a fast, reliable, and high-impact search experience for clients.Key ResponsibilitiesDevelop and enhance backend services to meet evolving product requirements, ensuring robust, scalable, and high-performance solutions.Contribute across the entire product lifecycle—from design and development to deployment, optimization, and scaling.Design, implement, and maintain Elasticsearch environments aligned with performance, reliability, and scalability goals.Collaborate closely with Product Managers, Architects, and Engineering teams to understand user needs and translate business requirements into technical solutions.Write clean, testable, and maintainable code while upholding engineering best practices.Participate in code reviews, architecture discussions, and continuous improvement initiatives.Drive technical excellence and foster a culture of ownership, accountability, and collaboration within the engineering team.Mentor and support engineers through technical guidance and architectural leadership.Required Qualifications12+ years of professional software development experience with a strong Computer Science foundation.3+ years of recent hands-on experience with Elasticsearch (or similar search technologies).Proven ability to design, build, and operate complex distributed systems and high-load services.Deep understanding of Elasticsearch architecture, performance tuning, and operational best practices.Experience with AWS services and cloud-native application development.Strong Golang development experience, or demonstrated ability and willingness to quickly learn and adopt Go.Solid understanding of:Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)Database concepts (RDBMS and NoSQL)Networking fundamentals and distributed system interactionsExperience developing RESTful APIs and working with modern web application frameworks.Proficiency in one or more of the following technologies:PythonPHPJavaScript (Node.js)JavaExperience building scalable, high-performance backend services.Familiarity with:CI/CD pipelinesAgile development methodologiesGit-based version control workflowsStrong verbal and written English communication skills in a global team environment.Preferred QualificationsExperience with frameworks such as:LaravelSymfonyOther enterprise-grade application frameworksCloud certifications or hands-on experience with:AWSGoogle Cloud Platform (Google Cloud Platform)Microsoft AzureExperience with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Kubernetes.Passion for continuous learning and staying current with emerging technologies and industry trends.