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

Elastic; United States; Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully paid health coverage for you and

family

Flexible location and schedule

Generous vacation days

Parental leave

Volunteer hours

Job summary

Elastic is seeking a proactive systems thinker to own the CI/CD roadmap and release infrastructure, ensuring secure, scalable deployments across engineering teams.

You will lead multi-quarter projects, break down architecture, and drive adoption across the organization while mentoring engineers and defining standards for release readiness.

Qualifications

• Proven expertise in CI/CD and release pipelines.
• Demonstrated ability to own multi-quarter projects across teams.
• Hands-on with CI infrastructure tools and Kubernetes.

Responsibilities

• Define the CI/CD roadmap and technical vision for an enterprise-wide deployment.
• Identify bottlenecks, friction, or security risks and drive remediation before incidents.
• Design and enforce release gates for supply chain integrity and release readiness at scale.
• Direct engineers on multi-quarter projects, breaking down architecture and owning outcomes.
• Communicate technical decisions clearly and produce documentation for systems and processes.
• Act as Incident Commander on high-severity supply chain or release incidents and drive improvements.
• Mentor engineers, review code, and raise the engineering bar across the org.
• Remain hands-on where appropriate, reviewing code and prototyping approaches.

Skills

CI/CD

Release engineering

Debugging

Cross-org ownership

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
• 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).

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.

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.

Deep expertise in CI/CD and what it takes to harden a release pipeline against supply chain attacks.

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.

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.

Experience directing the work of other engineers toward outcomes not just collaborating, but breaking down complex problems into executable work and holding the outcome.

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.