Principal Software Engineer, OpenSearch Platform

Oracle • Nashville, TN

3d • Remote

About The Position

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to help build and operate OCI Search Service with OpenSearch. This individual-contributor role owns complex distributed-systems design and service excellence for a managed search and analytics platform. OCI offers the opportunity to solve production-scale infrastructure problems where architecture, automated operations, security, and customer experience are inseparable. The role contributes to a managed service used for application search, log analytics, and observability workloads. The role leads platform projects crossing multiple teams, evolving runtimes or middleware patterns for interoperability and multi-tenant scale. It diagnoses and resolves complex cross-service issues; enforces versioning, compatibility, and safe rollout practices. It drives observability standards, capacity planning, and resilience patterns across several workloads. It produces migration guides and adoption playbooks that raise ecosystem consistency and developer experience.

Requirements

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in a technical discipline, or equivalent industry experience.
• 10+ years in software engineering or infrastructure roles.
• Experience designing, deploying, and operating scalable OpenSearch, Elasticsearch, or similar managed-service clusters.
• Deep knowledge of distributed systems, availability, throughput, and production operations.
• Proficiency in Java and Python and experience with robust unit, integration, and CI practices.
• Hands-on experience with automation, monitoring, alerting, incident response, and performance tuning.

Nice To Haves

• Exposure to vector databases is beneficial.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and improve secure, scalable features and fixes for the managed OpenSearch service.
• Drive sound design decisions, release planning, production readiness, and operational excellence.
• Improve build systems, test frameworks, and performance and scalability validation.
• Partner across OCI to remove delivery blockers and troubleshoot complex distributed-network and service issues.
• Automate operational procedures, strengthen SRE practices, and participate in the on-call rotation.
• Apply OCI security standards and mentor engineers through code review and problem solving.
• Lead cross-team evolution of middleware patterns or runtimes to standardize interoperability at scale.
• Define and enforce versioning, deprecation, and rollout strategies that minimize downstream breaks.
• Drive shared observability baselines (SLOs, error budgets) and resilience patterns across several services.
• Designs software solutions and analyzes and identifies requirements to achieve business and operational goals, sharing results with manager upon completion.
• Adheres to and improves execution of all phases of the software development lifecycle; provides guidance and coaching to engineers to drive improvements.
• Utilizes advanced knowledge to develop and guide new software features and enhancements leading design specifications, ensuring accessibility, and develops documents to clarify software design and code.
• Leads code reviews in multiple areas to help drive improvements.
• Conducts debugging and troubleshooting to identify and fix complex software issues.
• Develops fixes for identified issues.
• Implements comprehensive software testing (e.g., functional and non-functional testing), quality assurance processes, software error logging, monitoring, and observability for effective debugging, sharing work with manager and/or lead upon completion.
• Conducts performance profiling and optimization of coding, building scalable solutions, and anticipating and resolving potential outcomes.
• Troubleshoots and resolves complex issues related to application programming interface (API) functionality and integration.
• Implements complex API versioning, lifecycle, and interoperability strategies.
• Implements and contributes to developing software, systems, and services, ensuring review by manager and/or senior technical leaders upon completion.
• Recommends project or design scope.
• Provides technical guidance and coaching to less experienced developers in existing software architecture.
• Contributes to periodic reviews and ensures adherence to architectural standards.
• Collaborates with stakeholders and networks externally to ensure work aligns with software architecture.
• Implements complex performance optimization and scalability strategies in software design.
• Occasionally conducts technology research and evaluation for potential architectural changes that may have an impact on results for the team.
• Collaborates with stakeholders to understand customer issues and align solutions.
• May provide advanced technical guidance and support to customers regarding customer-reported issues.
• Advocates for customers' interests and suggests product enhancements based on feedback.
• Provides input to ensure customer satisfaction through timely resolution of issues and effective communication.
• Identifies and implements customer issue and/or defect handling and training processes.
• Investigates and troubleshoots complex and broad-reaching/scoped maintenance issues to ensure customer agreement on short- and long-term solutions (e.g., future enhancements).
• Collaborates with the team and externally to follow development practices and coding standards, providing coaching to less experienced team members.
• Participates in peer review processes, provides technical leadership, and ensures code quality and adherence to broad acceptance criteria during development, independently.
• Demonstrates and shares advanced knowledge of industry best practices and applies them to software development processes.
• Implements complex secure coding practices to prevent security vulnerabilities.
• Performs periodic maintenance and testing operations for systems that require upgrading or patching (e.g., for critical vulnerabilities), sharing results with manager upon completion.
• Drives improvements, ensures automation, testing, and debugging of systems to ensure service/product availability, health, support, and reliability.
• Manages and coordinates moderately complex tasks, monitoring timelines and deliverables to ensure timely completion and adherence to requirements for a moderately sized project or initiative.
• Efficiently delegates, monitors, and prioritizes work across multiple projects, providing technical oversight and adjusting plans to address shifts in resources or timelines.
• Collaborates across the organization to align on expectations and achieve shared objectives.
• Leverages understanding of business leaders, stakeholders, and/or customers to ensure proposed solutions meet their needs.
• Supports inclusivity by actively seeking and listening to diverse perspectives, ensuring others feel heard and respected.
• Identifies and addresses moderately complex issues by analyzing a wide range of data and/or information to identify solutions in accordance with standard practices.
• Proactively escalates unresolved or critical issues with a thorough assessment and suggests potential solutions.
• Reviews, contributes to, and documents problem solving strategies.
• Pursues learning opportunities to expand knowledge and skills and/or tools in new areas and stays abreast of the latest industry trends and best practices.
• Proactively seeks and leverages ongoing feedback and training to improve skills.
• Coaches and mentors junior team members, fostering continuous learning and knowledge sharing within and across teams.
• Develops ideas, recommends updates, and/or collaborates on the implementation of process improvements to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of processes, protocols, and workflows across teams, and evaluates the impact on key stakeholders.
• Solicits feedback from others on ideas for alternative approaches and methods for continued improvement.
• Contributes to the talent development pipeline by participating in candidate interviews, assessing candidates, and providing hiring recommendations.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, including expert medical opinion
• Short term disability and long term disability
• Life insurance and AD&D
• Supplemental life insurance (Employee/Spouse/Child)
• Health care and dependent care Flexible Spending Accounts
• Pre-tax commuter and parking benefits
• 401(k) Savings and Investment Plan with company match
• Flexible Vacation is provided to all eligible employees assigned to a salaried (non-overtime eligible) position. Accrued Vacation is provided to all other employees eligible for vacation benefits. For employees working at least 35 hours per week, the vacation accrual rate is 13 days annually for the first three years of employment and 18 days annually for subsequent years of employment. Vacation accrual is prorated for employees working between 20 and 34 hours per week. Employees working fewer than 20 hours per week are not eligible for vacation.
• 11 paid holidays
• 72 hours of paid sick leave upon date of hire. Refreshes each calendar year. Unused balance will carry over each year up to a maximum cap of 112 hours.
• Paid parental leave
• Adoption assistance
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Financial planning and group legal
• Voluntary benefits including auto, homeowner and pet insurance

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: Associate degree