Principal Software Engineer (Networking, Platform Infra)

Join Elastic as a Principal Software Engineer in the Platform Infrastructure - Application Networking team. You will drive the technical vision, architecture, and design of application networking systems, including Ingress, security controls, private connectivity, and DNS management. This role requires experience in building high-performance, scalable networking platforms and the ability to lead multi-quarter, cross-organizational projects. You will also mentor and support engineers across the team and partner with product management and senior engineering stakeholders.

Set the technical direction for major application networking initiatives, owning designs from proposal through general availability.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development of Ingress, private connectivity, DNS, and security controls on a large scale for Elastic Cloud.
• Mentor and support engineers across the team, serve as a subject matter expert and trusted technical advisor to the wider engineering organization.
• You have a proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code, while still owning the final outcomes

Requirements

• Experience with building software, including setting technical direction for complex distributed systems running production at scale (Staff or Principal level, or equivalent scope)
• You are able to own projects from beginning to end. This covers both technical design and working with others to develop needed components. You have experience guiding work involving multiple engineers
• You possess the ability to collaborate across functions and teams and seamlessly transition between different projects, codebases, or teams based on business priorities
• You have experience building large-scale distributed systems, rather than making use of off-the-shelf services
• 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
• You have operated high-availability SaaS platforms, responded to incidents, and improved reliability over time. You care about the quality of work shipped — testing, observability, and operability
• Deep expertise in application networking and cloud-native architecture. You should understand how services communicate at scale. Knowledge of how to design, operate, and evolve Ingress, private connectivity, DNS, and security controls is required
• You have contributed to CNCF or other open-source networking projects

Preferred

• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes networking (Cilium, external-dns, Envoy Gateway, and Crossplane) and with at least one major cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and its networking ecosystem

Pay

EUR 88,400 - 119,300