Principal Software Engineer - Builder Experience - Platform Engineering Productivity

Elastic; Poland; Hybrid; PLN 369,000 - 584,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage for you and family

Flexible locations & schedules

Generous vacation days

Charitable donation matching up to $2,

Volunteer hours (up to 40 per year)

Parental leave

Job summary

Elastic, the Search AI Company, is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead AI Enablement and Developer Experience within the Platform Engineering Productivity team. You’ll shape how Elastic engineers build and ship AI-enabled tooling across the organization, driving high-impact improvements in quality and efficiency.

You’ll own metrics, mentor engineers, and partner with leadership to align on requirements, testing strategies, and delivery goals in a fast-paced, distributed environment.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience integrating AI-assisted development into production systems.
• Judgment to know when AI is the right answer and when it isn’t, across the organization.
• Ability to move fluidly across projects, codebases, and evolving team structures.
• High agency and ownership of outcomes with a systems-thinking approach.
• Curiosity and self-teaching of new tools and approaches.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical vision for AI-assisted development across the org, from agent context standards to tooling.
• Identify high-leverage SDLC points where AI reduces toil and ship tooling.
• Design guardrails: quality gates, security boundaries, and measurable outcomes.
• Improve CI infrastructure reliability and efficiency; enable releasable artifacts.
• Enable ephemeral dev environments and tooling for deployment and release.
• Define release quality gates that scale across teams.
• Own metrics like cycle time, adoption, toil reduction; guide investment.
• Review code to uphold engineering standards and catch defects early.
• Collaborate with leadership to align requirements, testing, and delivery goals.
• Drive clear technical communication and high-quality documentation.
• Mentor engineers to reinforce code quality, pragmatism, and AI fluency.

Skills

AI-assisted development

Prompt engineering

Systems thinking

Ownership

Cross-team collaboration

Tools

LLM APIs

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:

Join our Platform Engineering Productivity team as a Principal Software Engineer on AI Enablement and Developer Experience. We're looking for a systems thinker who is curious by nature, stays ahead of the curve on AI and emerging tooling, and takes ownership not just of what the team builds but of how the entire engineering org works.

In this role, you'll shape how Elastic engineers build and ship — making AI a genuine accelerant in the development lifecycle while ensuring our products reach customers with high quality. If you thrive in ambiguity, operate with high agency, and are energized by work that multiplies the effectiveness of every team around you, we'd love to hear from you.

What You Will Be Doing:

• Define the technical vision for AI-assisted development across the org from agent context standards and shared skills to LLM-backed tooling embedded in everyday engineering workflows.
• Identify the highest-leverage points in the SDLC where AI can meaningfully reduce toil, then build and ship the tooling to capture that leverage.
• Design the guardrails that make AI adoption fast and safe — quality gates, security boundaries, and measurement that tells us whether it's actually working.
• Improve CI infrastructure reliability and efficiency, and build the systems that produce releasable artifacts.
• Enable *ephemeral* developer environments and build tooling for product deployment and release.
• Define and enforce release quality gates that scale across teams.
• Own the metrics that matter: cycle time, adoption, toil reduction — and use them to drive where the team invests next.
• Review code to uphold engineering standards, improve performance, and catch defects early.
• Partner with engineering and product leadership to align on requirements, testing strategy, and delivery goals.
• Drive clear technical communication and alignment across teams, and produce high-quality documentation for systems, processes, and architectural decisions.
• Mentor engineers and cultivate a culture where code quality, pragmatism, and AI fluency reinforce each other.

What You Bring:

• Deep, hands-on fluency with AI-assisted development — integrating LLM APIs into production systems and applying a prompt-engineering mindset to real domain problems.
• The judgment to know when AI is the right answer and when it isn't, and the credibility to make that call across the organization.
• Comfort moving fluidly across projects, codebases, and evolving team structures — and helping others do the same.
• High agency and full ownership of outcomes, with a systems-thinking approach to problems that span team boundaries.
• Natural curiosity — you teach yourself new tools and approaches without being asked.

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 a minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave

Security & Privacy Responsibilities:

Take ownership of protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of organizational data and systems by following applicable privacy and security policies, standards, and procedures. Ensure that all individual contributions follow Elastic’s Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF). Proactively participate in mandatory role-based training to ensure personal technical execution consistently aligns with the highest standards of data protection, data privacy, and system resilience.

Different people approach problems differently. We need that. 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 and can view the following posters linked below:

Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Poster

Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) 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.

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:

369 400 zł—584 300 zł PLN