The ESSEX project has investigated programming concepts, data structures, and numerical algorithms for scalable, efficient, and robust sparse eigenvalue solvers on future heterogeneous exascale systems. Starting without the burden of legacy code, a holistic performance engineering process could be deployed across the traditional software layers to identify efficient implementations and guide sustainable software development. At the basic building blocks level, a flexible MPI+X programming approach was implemented together with a new sparse data structure (SELL-C-σ) to support heterogeneous architectures by design. Furthermore, ESSEX focused on hardware-efficient kernels for all relevant architectures and efficient data structures for block vector formulations of the eigensolvers. The algorithm layer addressed standard, generalized, and nonlinear eigenvalue problems and provided some widely usable solver implementations including a block Jacobi-Davidson algorithm, contour-based integration schemes, and filter polynomial approaches. Adding to the highly efficient kernel implementations, algorithmic advances such as adaptive precision, optimized filtering coefficients, and preconditioning have further improved time to solution. These developments