Principal Software Engineer (CI/CD - Platform Engineering Productivity)

Elastic; Madrid; Hybrid; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully paid health coverage

Flexible location and schedule

Generous vacation days

16 weeks parental leave

Volunteer time off

Charitable giving matching

Job summary

Elastic is seeking a Platform Engineering Productivity lead to own the CI/CD and release infrastructure, enabling engineers to deploy changes securely at scale.

You will identify bottlenecks, enforce release gates, mentor teams, and provide incident leadership across multiple orgs, while maintaining hands-on review of pipelines and architectures to improve velocity and security.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in CI/CD and hardening release pipelines against supply-chain attacks.
• Experience directing the work of other engineers toward outcomes and breaking down complex problems into executable work.
• Hands-on with CI infrastructure and modern deployment tooling (Buildkite, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, Kubernetes).

Responsibilities

• Define the roadmap and technical vision for CI/CD from problem identification through org-wide adoption.
• Identify bottlenecks, friction, or security risks and drive remediation.
• Direct engineers on complex, multi-quarter projects and own the outcome.

Skills

CI/CD

Systems thinking

Incident response

Cross-team leadership

Code review

Documentation

Tools

Buildkite

GitHub Actions

ArgoCD

Kubernetes

Job description

• The Platform Engineering Productivity team operates the CI, CD, and Release infrastructure for the company
• We ensure developers can efficiently and safely deploy changes across our various environments and at scale
• In an age of AI, the landscape is evolving rapidly from scaling needs to, more than ever, securing our supply chain
• There are interesting challenges to tackle
• We’re looking for a proactive systems thinker who delivers on business-driven projects while identifying and driving the work that keeps our infrastructure ahead before scaling and security challenges become problems
• If you’re energized by work that makes every engineering team at Elastic ship faster and more securely, we’d love to hear from you
• Define the roadmap and technical vision for CI/CD, from problem identification through org-wide adoption
• Identify where CI/CD is a bottleneck, a source of friction, or a security risk before it becomes an incident, and drive the remediation rather than waiting to be assigned it
• Design and enforce release gates covering supply chain integrity, artifact provenance, and release readiness, built to scale across teams without becoming a tax on engineering velocity
• Direct engineers on your team through complex, multi-quarter projects: break down the architecture, assign the work, and own the outcome even when the execution is distributed
• Drive clear technical communication and alignment across teams, and produce high-quality documentation for systems, processes, and architectural decisions
• Serve as Incident Commander on high-severity supply chain or release incidents, and use each incident as a forcing function for structural improvements
• Raise the engineering bar across the org through code review, mentorship, design review, and by setting standards others adopt voluntarily
• Remain hands-on at the right depth: you’ll review code, prototype approaches, and debug production issues, but your primary leverage at this level is through the work of others, not your own output

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).

Deep expertise in CI/CD and what it takes to harden a release pipeline against supply chain attacksThe judgment to push back on a prescribed plan when it’s the wrong call, and the credibility to get alignment on a better approachExperience directing the work of other engineers toward outcomes not just collaborating, but breaking down complex problems into executable work and holding the outcomeStrong debugging instincts across the full pipeline stack: you trace failures from test runner to artifact store to cluster deployment without needing a specialist for each layerA track record of multi-quarter, cross-org ownership: you’ve identified the right problem, designed the solution, and gotten organizations that didn’t report to you to change how they workHands-on with CI infrastructure (Buildkite, GitHub Actions, or equivalent), GitOps/ArgoCD, and KubernetesYou use AI to accelerate your own work and your team’s and you understand AI’s impact on supply chain security and scale