Principal Software Engineer I - Serverless - Platform Control Plane at Elastic Nv Remote

Sunseeker Property Service; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Elastic, the Search AI Company, is seeking a Principal level engineer for the Control Plane Serverless team. You will shape the orchestration layer behind Elastic Cloud Serverless, design distributed services across AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, and own the roadmap from proposal to general availability.

You will lead cross-team initiatives, mentor engineers, raise reliability and security standards, and partner with product management to set technical direction while maintaining asynchronous

Qualifications

• 8+ years building software at scale.
• Deep expertise in Kubernetes and cloud-native architecture.
• Proficiency with Go and cloud providers (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Experience operating high-availability SaaS platforms and incident response.
• Proven track record using AI to accelerate development and debugging.
• Strong cross-team collaboration and autonomous decision making.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for major Serverless initiatives from design to GA.
• Lead multi-quarter projects with dependencies across teams such as Elasticsearch and Kibana.
• Design, build, and evolve distributed systems to orchestrate Serverless projects across cloud providers.
• Raise operational standards and participate in on-call rotations.
• Mentor engineers and influence roadmaps across teams.
• Collaborate with product management to evaluate trade-offs and timelines.
• Identify security, stability, and cost improvements early.

Skills

Kubernetes

Cloud-native

Go programming

Distributed systems

SaaS reliability

AI-assisted development

Asynchronous collaboration

Leadership

Tools

AWS

Google Cloud

Azure

Go

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 Control Plane Serverless team builds and operates the orchestration layer behind Elastic Cloud Serverless. Elastic Cloud Serverless is our fully managed offering, built on a stateless architecture that separates compute from storage and scales automatically with customer demand. We build the distributed services that create, configure, scale, and manage the lifecycle of Serverless projects on AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, and we own Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK). Our stack is built on Kubernetes, Go, and cloud-native architectures. This is a Principal level role for an engineer who wants to shape where this platform goes next. Elastic is investing heavily in Serverless, building new capabilities for customers and expanding to more regions and cloud providers, while holding a high bar for reliability and security. You will set technical direction for this work, not just execute it. We are a distributed team of skilled engineers across the world. We work asynchronously by default, write things down, share context openly, and give engineers real ownership of hard problems. You will partner closely with our tech lead, engineering manager, and product management, and with teams such as Elasticsearch and Kibana on initiatives that span the whole stack.

Day to day

Day to day, you will shape technical designs and trade-off analyses, write and review code, lead the investigation of complicated failure scenarios, and balance work across security, reliability, and features. You will also participate in an on-call rotation to address operational events in a timely manner.

What You Will Be Doing

• Set the technical direction for major initiatives across the Serverless control plane, owning designs from proposal through general availability.
• Lead multi-quarter projects with dependencies across teams such as Elasticsearch and Kibana, and guide these projects through to delivery.
• Design, build, and evolve the distributed systems that orchestrate and manage Serverless projects across cloud service providers.
• Raise the operational bar of our services, lead complex incident investigations and reviews, and participate in the on-call rotation.
• Mentor and support engineers across the team, level up our collective technical judgment, and set the standard for how we build software.
• Partner with and advise product management and senior engineering stakeholders on technical trade-offs, feasibility, and roadmap direction.
• Identify and champion improvements to security, stability, and cost efficiency before they become problems.

What You Bring

• 8+ years building software, including setting technical direction for complex distributed systems running production at scale (Staff or Principal level, or equivalent scope).
• Deep expertise in Kubernetes and cloud-native architecture, including designing systems that orchestrate other systems.
• Proficiency with Go, and hands-on work with at least one major cloud service provider (AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure).
• You have operated high-availability SaaS platforms, responded to incidents, and improved reliability over time.
• You have a proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code, while still owning the final outcomes.
• You possess the ability to collaborate across teams and seamlessly transition between different projects, codebases, or teams based on business priorities.
• You can work autonomously, drive decisions and results in a distributed team by leveraging asynchronous, direct, and transparent communication.
• You communicate clearly and can influence direction across teams and levels without formal authority.

Bonus Points

• You have built for FedRAMP or other regulated, compliance-heavy environments.
• Practical knowledge of the Elastic Stack or any of its products.
• You have worked with Kubernetes operators or Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK).