Principal Software Engineer, Elastic
Performance Team, Elasticsearch
$185.6-232.9k
Salary is applicable to US rates only. Eligible to participate in Elastic's stock program
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
$185.6-232.9k
Salary is applicable to US rates only. Eligible to participate in Elastic's stock program
1001+ employees
Company mission
To help turn endless data possibilities into real results with the power of Search AI.
Role
Who you are
- Software development experience with Python and Linux shell required (Expert Level)
- Familiarity with Linux system-level performance measurement and associated tooling (for example: how to measure and compare CPU, memory, and disk I/O performance between cloud provider instance types)
- Prior experience in the troubleshooting and root cause analysis of performance issues in complex distributed architectures
- Cloud orchestration with Kubernetes
- Prior experience with CI/CD pipelines and automating process workflows
- Experience in cloud architectures, service models, and operating across multiple cloud service providers, assessing tradeoffs from both performance and deployment perspectives
- Ability to multitask, effectively manage your time, and collaborate with team members globally across time zones
- Familiarity with measuring performance and sizing in Linux VM and container environments
Desirable
- Prior experience with large, distributed search engines and in developing and tuning queries
- Familiarity with the Elasticsearch Query API and building Kibana dashboards is a strong plus
What the job involves
- We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer I to join our Elasticsearch Performance Engineering area
- This role will focus on enhancing our processes and automated tooling for benchmarking Elasticsearch ingest and search workloads at scale in the cloud, and identifying performance regressions
- Design and building of tooling and automated processes for provisioning and execution of Elasticsearch performance benchmarking jobs at scale
- Maintain our open source Python based benchmarking tool, Rally and act as a source of best practice within the team regarding our Python-based tooling
- Defining methodologies and guidelines for performance benchmarking servicing development teams and solution architects
- Participate or lead in cross-functional team efforts and engagements
- Developing reporting for and interpreting benchmarking results
- Investigate and assist in resolving performance escalations and capacity planning issues
- Address and devise solutions for benchmarking disparate use cases and workloads
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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