Some people call Elasticsearch an “in-house search engine” or a “Google at your full command” — and they are essentially correct. The tool allows you to easily search across all the documents you feed it with. It performs great, can be used with distributed systems, and is highly scalable.
Why use Elasticsearch?
The tool is most commonly used for logs monitoring. By reading and processing data about your product’s currents state, you can quickly spot…
- Current issues with your product’s performance.
- Cyberattacks or areas where cyberattacks can happen.
- Areas where performance can be potentially improved.
- Critical bugs that cause a downturn.
All this provides you with a guarantee that your product is monitored 24/7 and you can avoid costly issues as they can be spotted and fixed fast.
Additionally, Elasticsearch can be used for searching for solutions and procedures across all your company’s documents fast. No need to open every document separately — Elasticsearch will handle all of them at once and point you to the correct one. As the tool supports multi-language searches, it’s an amazing tool for teams distributed across the world.
Finally, Elasticsearch can also be the base of your web app should you require to have a complex search functionality implemented in it. This is especially helpful for e-commerce solutions, such as online marketplaces.
Why hire an Elasticsearch developer?
Elasticsearch developer is needed in your team not only to initially set up the tool but also later maintain it by making sure it’s being fed with new data and documents regularly.
Fortunately for you, the number of Elasticsearch developers is growing. As Stack Overflow reports in their 2020 Developer Survey, the tool is currently used by around 15.5% of professional developers. Elasticsearch is also one of the most loved (by those who already use it) and wanted (by those who don’t use it yet) technologies in its category.
But how to make the right choice and hire an Elasticsearch developer who will deliver truly great results for your company? We explain it in our guide below by highlighting for you the skills your ideal candidate should have, the Elasticsearch job interview questions you might want to ask them, and how to find the perfect fit for your unique needs.
The tech skills your Elasticsearch developer should have
As Elasticsearch developer is a highly specialized role, it requires a very specific skillset. We lay out the details below.
- Experience with the ELK stack
If you are looking for an Elasticsearch developer, you most likely want to hire an ELK expert. The abbreviation ELK comes from three tools developed by a company called Elastic.
The first one is Elasticsearch itself — a tool responsible for search and analysis of the data.
The second one is Logstash — helping with collecting data from multiple sources, transforming it into relevant form, and then shipping it to the planned destination. In other words, it’s the tool for creating data pipelines.
Finally, we have Kibana — visualization software making understanding the data collected by Elasticsearch and Logstash way easier, especially for non-techies.
To expand the possibilities of their toolset even further, in 2015, Elastic added Beats to the ELK Stack — a lightweight support for Logstash in the form of agents that log data from the specific device they are installed on.
To truly thrive in the role, your Elasticsearch developer should be experienced with all the tools included in the ELK stack.
- Knowledge of Java
As Elasticsearch (and the rest of the ELK stack) has been built using Java, it’s also the recommended programming language to use with the tool. Using other languages (e.g. Ruby with Ruby on Rails) is also possible but Java is recommended for the best performance.
- Experience in working with cloud solutions
As the ELK stack operates essentially on distributed systems, experience with them and with operations on cloud is a must for an Elasticsearch developer. The most popular solutions include AWS and Microsoft Azure. Elastic also offers their own cloud solution tailored to the ELK Stack, the Elastic Cloud Enterprise. You should preferably choose the Elasticsearch developer who has experience with the cloud solution your company is already using.
The most important soft skills an Elasticsearch developer should have
To make sure your Elasticsearch expert can provide your business with truly remarkable results, remember to review their soft skills as well. A specific set of these won’t only power up the efficiency of your new hire but also of their teammates!
Look especially for candidates with the following features:
- Attention to details
To build ELK solutions that provide reliable data, not impacted by a human error.
- Business-oriented attitude
To find the best ways to optimize Elasticsearch to your company’s unique needs.
- Approachability
To be open to suggestions from other teams and build solutions that solve actual problems of your organization.
- Passion for learning new things
To be on top of revolutionary changes that can improve your organization’s efficiency even further.
Asking the right Elasticsearch job interview questions
A technical job interview is an obvious step for every company that wants to hire an Elasticsearch developer. Be aware, however, that this kind of interview should be run by someone already experienced in the ELK stack. If you are not such a person yourself, consider asking for assistance from another Elasticsearch expert, a software consultant, or an IT project manager.
Below you’ll find some of the questions that candidates for the Elasticsearch developer role are often asked about.
- What are shards and replicas in Elasticsearch?
- What is a tokenizer?
- What does a Logstash forwarder do?
- What’s the inverted index?
- How X-stack helps in ELK-powered projects?
- What’s YAML? How is it related to the ELK stack?
- Do you know any alternatives to Elasticsearch? What’s your experience with them?
- How Beats and Logstash complement each other?
Finding an Elasticsearch expert who truly fits your business
What if you happen to end up with a few different candidates — each having all the hard and soft skills your project requires? Consider the company fit. By finding an Elasticsearch developer who truly matches your company and the specific project, you can boost up the efficiency and cooperation within your team.
Think especially of the two following areas of company fit…
- Industry fit
If possible, hire an Elasticsearch expert who has already worked in this role in another company within your industry. Such experience means they most likely already understand the requirements of your specific niche and have an idea on how to implement the ELK stack for your business in the best way possible.
- Company culture fit
Even if some of your non-tech team members won’t fully understand the power of the ELK stack, they will still be benefiting from it. To make sure everyone cooperates well for the best of your company, always consider the company culture fit an important factor in the hiring process. Consider the values that are important for your company and look for experts who also share them. These values could include the approach to remote work, the preferred style of management, or the preferred work environment type (close-knit startup vs distributed, corporation-like).
Who else will you need?
Elasticsearch and the rest of the ELK stack is an amazing set of tools that can help you guarantee your products work flawlessly 24/7 and that your company’s documentation is easily accessible.
But there are even more ways to power up your business with data! And whether you are looking for data engineers, data scientists, AI experts, or machine learning engineers, Ideamotive can help you get these experts fast. We run a unique network of IT talents from all over the world looking for new career opportunities.
With us, you can be sure you hire an expert truly fitting your company and project — as we always review your unique needs before connecting you with the most fitting professionals.
