Principal Software Engineer (Builder Experience, Platform Engineering Productivity)

• Join our Platform Engineering Productivity team as a Principal Software Engineer. We’re looking for a systems-minded engineer who is curious by nature, stays current with AI and emerging tools, and takes ownership not only of what the team builds, but also how the team works
• In this role, you will help ensure Elastic products are delivered to customers with high quality while making the software development and release process more efficient for engineers across the organization. If you think systematically, thrive in ambiguity, and enjoy enabling teams to build and ship software effectively at scale, we’d love to hear from you
• As part of the Engineering Productivity team, you will build and improve the frameworks, reusable components, and operational guidelines that help teams own the full software development lifecycle for their services. You may work across a wide range of initiatives, including:
• Improving CI infrastructure reliability and efficiency
• Building and managing systems that produce releasable artifacts
• Enabling ephemeral developer environments
• Defining and enforcing release quality gates
• Developing tooling and infrastructure for product deployment and release
• Review code to uphold engineering standards, improve performance, and catch defects early
• Collaborating with engineering and product to align on requirements, testing strategy, and delivery goals
• Drive clear technical communication across teams and projects
• Create and maintain high-quality technical documentation for systems, processes, and architectural decisions
• Mentoring engineers and fostering a collaborative culture around code quality and best practices

Benefits

• Toast to your health: Fully paid health coverage for you and your family, in many locations.
• Craft your calendar: Flexible location and schedule for most roles.
• Create space for you: Distributed by design workforce, plus generous number of vacation days each year.
• Embrace parenthood: Minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave, plus generous family formation benefits.
• Give back your time: 40 hours each year to use toward volunteering with organizations and causes you’re passionate about.
• Amplify your impact: Double your charitable giving — we match donations up to $1500 USD (or local currency equivalent).- Ability to move fluidly across projects, priorities, and evolving team structures
• Experience with CI/CD systems, GIT and modern development and release practices
• Enthusiasm for working with a globally distributed team and comfort in navigating ambiguity
• Solid understanding of the full software development lifecycle, including build, package, test, release, and quality strategy
• Experience designing scalable systems and improving developer productivity through tooling and automation
• Hands-on AI fluency, including integrating LLM APIs into production workflows and applying prompt engineering to domain-specific problems
• Excellent written and verbal technical communication skills
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and developer platforms, including tools such as Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker, configuration management tools, and major cloud providers
• Deep experience in one or more programming languages such as Python, Go, Bash, Java, or Scala
• A track record of improving engineering practices such as code review quality, standards, and team efficiency