Distinguished Engineer, Elastic
Search
$249.7-474k
Salary varies by location
Open source platform powering search, observability, security, and more
Be an early applicant
Open source platform powering search, observability, security, and more
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$249.7-474k
Salary varies by location
1001+ employees
Company mission
To help turn endless data possibilities into real results with the power of Search AI.
Role
Who you are
- The team is looking for someone with success using and building search technology that powers critical applications
- Proven experience as technical leader for large, complex engineering teams and projects
- Deep expertise in Java/JVM, search technologies, context engineering, experience building complex distributed systems, or understanding of the inner workings of databases/datastores
- Passionate about Search
- Able to reason about architecture at both high and detailed levels
- Hands-on: comfortable coding, reviewing PRs, and staying close to the team’s work
- Excellent communicator, collaborator, and problem solver
- Operates with high autonomy
Desirable
- Extensive technical leadership in search
- Experience with the Elastic Stack
- Built search products at scale
- Open-source project leadership or major contributions
What the job involves
- As a recognized leader in the search space, Elastic’s Search team connects our core technologies, from Elasticsearch, to our GPU-based inference service, to real-world business needs, enabling our customers to build market leading applications and address critical business needs
- We build everything from foundational infrastructure that extends Elasticsearch, to user-facing features like Agent Builder that enable customers to create powerful search and Agentic experiences
- You’ll be the technical leader shaping the architecture and vision for Elastic’s Search products, ensuring that using Elasticsearch for building applications, Agents, or as a context engineering Platform is easy to get started with and operate, while preserving the flexibility to configure every aspect of search & relevance
- We are looking for a technology and engineering leader (Distinguished Engineer level) to help us realize our goals
- You'll own and evolve the architecture and roadmap for Search, Context Engineering, and Agent Building
- Define and enhance the end-to-end developer and user experience across use-cases
- Collaborate with the team owning Elasticsearch and other engineering teams across Elastic to align priorities and make smart technology and design choices
- Lead technical discussions with partners and customers to ensure our solutions meet real needs
- Review and advise implementation designs
- Evangelize the Search roadmap internally and externally
- Mentor engineers and foster technical excellence
Our take
Organizations are dealing with exploding data volumes increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, and the growing expectation tha ttechnology should help act on problems, not just report them. Ai is moving from experimentation into real operations, especially in security and observability where speed and context are critical. So now, both enterprises and governments are looking for simpler, shared platforms that sale easily and reduce complexity rather than add to it.
And Elastic sits at the intersection of these needs with its Search AI Platform that helps organizations turn large amounts of structured and unstructured data into clear insights and actiontions across search, security, and observability. Elastic's strength lies in its open, flexible approach, which breaks down data silos and provides a context people and AI systems need to make daster, better decisions. The goal is straightforward: help teams see what's happening, understand it quickly, and respond confidently.
Recently, the company worked with CISA to deliver a unified, cloud-based SIEM for US federal agencies, this highlights strong trust in Elastic's security and scalability. Alongside this, its AWS Agentic AI Specialization also reflects leadership in making autonomous AI system practical and reliable. Together, these milestones position Elastic well for the future, as organizations increasingly rely on shared platforms and intelligent systems to manage ris, complexity, and growth.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
8% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Jul 2016
$58m
SERIES D
Jun 2014
$70m
SERIES C
Total funding: $162m
Company 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).
Company HQ
Union Square, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Ashutosh Kulkarni
(CEO)Ashutosh joined Elastic in 2021 as CPO, becoming CEO in 2022. Prior to this, he was an EVP and CPO of Enterprise at McAfee, a Senior VP and GM of Web Performance and Web Security at Akamai Technologies, and a Senior VP and GM of Informatica Cloud at Informatica.
Shay Banon
(Co-Founder & CTO)Shay co-founded Elastic in 2012 and has served as the CTO since.
Navam Welihinda
(CFO)Prior to joining Elastic in 2025, Navam was the CFO at Grammarly. He also spent nearly 8 years at HashiCorp as VP of Finance and CFO and was the Head of Finance, Compose at IBM for 1 year.
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