diff --git a/qa/vector/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/test/knn/KnnIndexer.java b/qa/vector/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/test/knn/KnnIndexer.java
index 98d629889feb8..43f9dbec22805 100644
--- a/qa/vector/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/test/knn/KnnIndexer.java
+++ b/qa/vector/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/test/knn/KnnIndexer.java
@@ -448,7 +448,7 @@ synchronized void next(float[] dest) throws IOException {
 
         synchronized void next(byte[] dest) throws IOException {
             readNext();
-            bytes.get(dest);
+            bytes.get(dest).position(0);
         }
     }
 }
diff --git a/qa/vector/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/test/knn/KnnSearcher.java b/qa/vector/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/test/knn/KnnSearcher.java
index b89c80ab66d8b..d20d81bf2b7f3 100644
--- a/qa/vector/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/test/knn/KnnSearcher.java
+++ b/qa/vector/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/test/knn/KnnSearcher.java
@@ -393,12 +393,10 @@ private int[][] getOrCalculateExactNN(int vectorFileOffsetBytes, SearchParameter
             long startNS = System.nanoTime();
             // TODO: enable computing NN from high precision vectors when
             // checking low-precision recall
-            int[][] nn;
-            if (vectorEncoding.equals(VectorEncoding.BYTE)) {
-                nn = computeExactNNByte(queryPath, filterQuery, vectorFileOffsetBytes);
-            } else {
-                nn = computeExactNN(queryPath, filterQuery, searchParameters.topK(), vectorFileOffsetBytes);
-            }
+            int[][] nn = switch (vectorEncoding) {
+                case BYTE -> computeExactNNByte(queryPath, filterQuery, searchParameters.topK(), vectorFileOffsetBytes);
+                case FLOAT32 -> computeExactNN(queryPath, filterQuery, searchParameters.topK(), vectorFileOffsetBytes);
+            };
             writeExactNN(nn, nnPath);
             long elapsedMS = TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS.toMillis(System.nanoTime() - startNS); // ns -> ms
             logger.info("computed " + numQueryVectors + " exact matches in " + elapsedMS + " ms");
@@ -562,7 +560,7 @@ private int[][] computeExactNN(Path queryPath, Query filterQuery, int topK, int
         }
     }
 
-    private int[][] computeExactNNByte(Path queryPath, Query filterQuery, int vectorFileOffsetBytes) throws IOException {
+    private int[][] computeExactNNByte(Path queryPath, Query filterQuery, int topK, int vectorFileOffsetBytes) throws IOException {
         int[][] result = new int[numQueryVectors][];
         try (Directory dir = FSDirectory.open(indexPath); DirectoryReader reader = DirectoryReader.open(dir)) {
             List<Callable<Void>> tasks = new ArrayList<>();
@@ -571,7 +569,7 @@ private int[][] computeExactNNByte(Path queryPath, Query filterQuery, int vector
                 for (int i = 0; i < numQueryVectors; i++) {
                     byte[] queryVector = new byte[dim];
                     queryReader.next(queryVector);
-                    tasks.add(new ComputeNNByteTask(i, queryVector, result, reader, filterQuery, similarityFunction));
+                    tasks.add(new ComputeNNByteTask(i, topK, queryVector, result, reader, filterQuery, similarityFunction));
                 }
                 ForkJoinPool.commonPool().invokeAll(tasks);
             }
@@ -637,11 +635,13 @@ static class ComputeNNByteTask implements Callable<Void> {
         private final byte[] query;
         private final int[][] result;
         private final IndexReader reader;
-        private final Query filterQuery;
         private final VectorSimilarityFunction similarityFunction;
+        private final Query filterQuery;
+        private final int topK;
 
         ComputeNNByteTask(
             int queryOrd,
+            int topK,
             byte[] query,
             int[][] result,
             IndexReader reader,
@@ -652,14 +652,14 @@ static class ComputeNNByteTask implements Callable<Void> {
             this.query = query;
             this.result = result;
             this.reader = reader;
-            this.filterQuery = filterQuery;
             this.similarityFunction = similarityFunction;
+            this.filterQuery = filterQuery;
+            this.topK = topK;
         }
 
         @Override
         public Void call() {
             IndexSearcher searcher = new IndexSearcher(reader);
-            int topK = result[0].length;
             try {
                 var queryVector = new ConstKnnByteVectorValueSource(query);
                 var docVectors = new ByteKnnVectorFieldSource(VECTOR_FIELD);
diff --git a/qa/vector/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/test/knn/TestConfiguration.java b/qa/vector/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/test/knn/TestConfiguration.java
index 7f41bb42b7316..4fd97b379655a 100644
--- a/qa/vector/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/test/knn/TestConfiguration.java
+++ b/qa/vector/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/test/knn/TestConfiguration.java
@@ -526,6 +526,7 @@ public Builder setDirectoryType(String directoryType) {
                "<corpus_2>.fvec"
              ],
              "queries": "<queries>.fvec",
+             "vector_encoding": "float32", // optional, default float32
              "dimensions": 512,
              "vector_space": "cosine",
              "num_doc_vectors": 10000000,
@@ -568,6 +569,7 @@ private void resolveDataset() throws Exception {
                 ).getFirst();
             }
 
+            Object vectorEncoding = dsData.get("vector_encoding");
             String vectorSpace = dsData.get("vector_space").toString();
             int numDocVectors = ((Number) dsData.get("num_doc_vectors")).intValue();
             int numQueryVectors = ((Number) dsData.get("num_query_vectors")).intValue();
@@ -583,6 +585,10 @@ private void resolveDataset() throws Exception {
 
             docVectors = data;
             queryVectors = queries;
+            // vector encoding is optional (default float32)
+            if (vectorEncoding != null) {
+                setVectorEncoding(vectorEncoding.toString());
+            }
             setDimensions(-1);  // dataset dimensions is documentation, the tester reads the dimensions from the fvec files
             // vector space might already be set explicitly from the config file
             if (this.vectorSpace == null) {