Software Engineer, Elasticsearch

Fantom Corporation is a mission-focused organization supporting critical programs across the defense and intelligence community. We partner with our customers to deliver high-impact technical solutions while fostering a culture built on trust, expertise, and long-term career growth.

We are seeking an experienced Search Software Engineer to develop and optimize enterprise search capabilities supporting mission-critical applications. This role focuses on backend Java development, search platform engineering, and big data technologies to build scalable, high-performance search and analytics solutions.

The ideal candidate has deep expertise in Elasticsearch or Apache Solr, strong backend Java development experience, and hands-on experience working with distributed data processing frameworks in large-scale data environments.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain enterprise search solutions using Elasticsearch or Apache Solr
• Design and implement search schemas, indexing strategies, and search optimization techniques
• Develop and optimize Lucene-based search queries to improve search accuracy and performance
• Configure, administer, and optimize Elasticsearch or Solr clusters, including shard design, replication, and performance tuning
• Develop scalable backend services using Java to support enterprise search and data processing applications
• Build, test, and deploy production-ready Java code following secure software development best practices
• Participate in code reviews, unit testing, integration testing, and production deployments
• Develop and maintain data processing pipelines using big data technologies
• Work with distributed computing frameworks to process and analyze large-scale datasets
• Troubleshoot application, search platform, and data pipeline performance issues
• Collaborate with software engineers, data engineers, and system architects to design scalable search and analytics solutions
• Participate in Agile development activities including sprint planning, code reviews, and technical design sessions

Required Qualifications

• Must be fully cleared with a recent polygraph
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline (or equivalent experience)
• Minimum of 5 years of hands-on backend Java development experience
• Experience developing production software that undergoes code reviews, unit testing, integration testing, and production deployment
• Minimum of 3 years of experience administering and developing solutions with Elasticsearch or Apache Solr
• Experience performing schema design and schema updates
• Strong knowledge of Lucene query syntax and search optimization techniques
• Experience designing and managing Elasticsearch or Solr shards and distributed search architectures
• Experience tuning Elasticsearch or Solr clusters for performance, scalability, and query optimization
• Minimum of 3 years of experience working in big data environments
• Experience with at least two of the following technologies:
  • Hadoop
  • Apache Spark
  • PySpark
  • HBase
  • Strong understanding of distributed computing, search architectures, and large-scale data processing
  • Excellent troubleshooting, analytical, and problem-solving skills
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills

Desired Qualifications

• Experience developing large-scale enterprise search platforms
• Experience supporting distributed, high-availability search environments
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices
• Experience with cloud-based search architectures
• Familiarity with containerization technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes
• Experience supporting secure government or Intelligence Community environments
• #CJ