Principal Software Engineer I - CI/CD - Platform Engineering Productivity

Elastic; Ireland; Remote; EUR 105,000 - 166,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Flexible schedules

Generous vacation days

Donation matching

Volunteer hours

Parental leave

Job summary

Elastic, the Search AI Company, is seeking a Platform Engineering Productivity lead to own the CI/CD roadmap and release processes. You will secure the supply chain, design scalable gates, and guide multiple engineering teams through complex projects.

You will mentor engineers, drive cross-team alignment, and stay hands-on where needed, ensuring faster, safer deployments across Elastic's environments.

Qualifications

• Deep CI/CD expertise and security-minded release engineering.
• Proficient in diagnosing end-to-end pipeline issues.
• Experience with Buildkite, GitHub Actions, and GitOps tools.
• Familiar with AI's impact on supply chain security.
• Proven cross-organizational ownership and leadership.

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.
• Design and enforce release gates for supply chain integrity and release readiness at scale.
• Direct engineers on complex, multi-quarter projects; break down architecture and own outcomes.
• Drive clear technical communication and align across teams; produce high-quality documentation.
• Serve as Incident Commander on high-severity supply chain or release incidents.
• Raise the engineering bar via code reviews, mentorship, design reviews, and by setting standards.
• Remain hands-on when needed, but leverage others' work for impact.

Skills

CI/CD expertise

End-to-end debugging

CI infrastructure

AI in security

Cross-org ownership

Strong judgment

Team leadership

Tools

Buildkite

GitHub Actions

GitOps/ArgoCD

Kubernetes

Job description

Elastic, the Search AI Company, enables everyone to find the answers they need in real time, using all their data, at scale — unleashing the potential of businesses and people. The Elastic Search AI Platform, used by more than 50% of the Fortune 500, brings together the precision of search and the intelligence of AI to enable everyone to accelerate the results that matter. By taking advantage of all structured and unstructured data — securing and protecting private information more effectively — Elastic’s complete, cloud-based solutions for search, security, and observability help organizations deliver on the promise of AI.

What Is The Role :

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.

What You Will Be Doing :

• 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.

What You Bring :

• Deep expertise in CI/CD and what it takes to harden a release pipeline against supply chain attacks.
• Strong 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 layer.
• Hands‑on with CI infrastructure (Buildkite, GitHub Actions, or equivalent), GitOps/ArgoCD, and Kubernetes.
• You use AI to accelerate your own work and your team's and you understand AI's impact on supply chain security and scale.
• A 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 work.
• The judgment to push back on a prescribed plan when it's the wrong call, and the credibility to get alignment on a better approach.
• Experience directing the work of other engineers toward outcomes not just collaborating, but breaking down complex problems into executable work and holding the outcome.

Compensation for this role is in the form of base salary. This role does not have a variable compensation component. At Elastic, our compensation philosophy aims to provide fair, competitive and transparent remuneration. Salary ranges are established based on a combination of external market benchmarks, internal pay equity considerations, and the responsibilities and complexity associated with each role. This approach helps ensure consistency across comparable roles while remaining competitive within the relevant labour markets. The final compensation offered within the applicable range will be determined based on several objective factors, including relevant professional experience, level of skills and expertise, alignment with the role requirements, and the overall scope and complexity of the position. The typical starting salary range for this role is: €104.800 — €165.700 EUR

Additional Information - We Take Care of Our People

As a distributed company, diversity drives our identity. Whether you’re looking to launch a new career or grow an existing one, Elastic is the type of company where you can balance great work with great life. Your age is only a number. It doesn’t matter if you’re just out of college or your children are; we need you for what you can do. We strive to have parity of benefits across regions and while regulations differ from place to place, we believe taking care of our people is the right thing to do.

• Competitive pay based on the work you do here and not your previous salary
• Health coverage for you and your family in many locations
• Ability to craft your calendar with flexible locations and schedules for many roles
• Generous number of vacation days each year
• Increase your impact - We match up to $2000 (or local currency equivalent) for financial donations and service
• Up to 40 hours each year to use toward volunteer projects you love
• Embracing parenthood with minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave Different people approach problems differently.

Elastic is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to creating an inclusive culture that celebrates different perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other basis protected by federal, state or local law, ordinance or regulation. We welcome individuals with disabilities and strive to create an accessible and inclusive experience for all individuals. To request an accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please email [e-mail] . We will reply to your request within 24 business hours of submission.

Applicants have rights under Federal Employment Laws, view posters linked below: Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Poster; Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision Poster; Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) Poster and Know Your Rights (Poster) Elasticsearch develops and distributes technology and information that is subject to U.S. and other countries’ export controls and licensing requirements for individuals who are located in or are nationals of the following sanctioned countries and regions: Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, or Russia, including the Ukrainian territories annexed by Russia (The Crimea region of Ukraine, The Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), The Luhansk People's Republic (LNR), Kherson or Zaporizhzhia). If you are located in or are a national of one of the listed countries or regions, an export license may be required as a condition of your employment in this role. Please note that national origin and/or nationality do not affect eligibility for employment with Elastic. Please see here for our Privacy Statement.