Director of Software Engineering - Distributed Systems, Serverless - Elasticsearch
Lead a distributed team of engineers to tackle challenges in Elasticsearch's distributed systems and Serverless offerings.
Posted by employer 2 days ago
First seen on Joblaze 1 day ago
Last verified on the company career page 1 day ago
Skills & Technologies
What you'll build
- Develop and execute engineering strategy for distributed systems
- Drive improvements in performance and scalability
- Lead the evolution of Elasticsearch's core distributed architecture
- Provide technical leadership for engineering initiatives
- Communicate engineering strategy to senior executives
Must have
- Proven track record of leading large-scale engineering organisations
- Previous hands-on software engineering experience
- Extensive experience designing large-scale distributed systems
- Strong understanding of distributed systems concepts
- Experience establishing engineering strategy
Nice to have
- Operational experience with system reliability
- Experience partnering with senior engineering leaders
Not disclosed in this posting: years of experience, visa sponsorship.
Benefits
Joblaze summary
The Director of Software Engineering at Elastic leads a team of around 40 engineers focused on enhancing Elasticsearch's distributed systems, particularly in relation to its Serverless offerings. This role requires a strong background in distributed systems, with hands-on experience in building and operating large-scale architectures. Ideal candidates are seasoned leaders with a track record of managing engineering teams and developing technical leaders, capable of navigating complex organizational challenges. Elastic's distributed nature fosters a diverse team environment, emphasizing collaboration across various platforms.
Joblaze insights
- Listed yesterday — first seen on Joblaze September 30, 2026. Last confirmed on Elastic's careers page September 30, 2026.
- Salary band is above the typical range for Management roles (median ~$170,000).
- Starts above 49% of 267 comparable director management roles in United States we track (median $200,000 across 120 companies).
- distributed systems appears in 0.6% of 476 comparable director management roles in United States.
Quick facts
- Is the Director of Software Engineering - Distributed Systems, Serverless - Elasticsearch role remote?
- Yes — Elastic lists this as a fully remote position.
- What's the salary range?
- Elastic lists $199,700–$315,900 for this role.
- What's the tech stack?
- Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: Elasticsearch, distributed systems, serverless.
- What seniority level is this role?
- Elastic targets director candidates for this position.
- Is this full-time or contract?
- Full-time for this Director of Software Engineering - Distributed Systems, Serverless - Elasticsearch role at Elastic.
From the original posting
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
We are on the lookout for a Director of Software Engineering to lead our Elasticsearch Distributed Systems organisation which focuses on how Elasticsearch provides scale, performance, and resilience, especially in the context of our Serverless offering.
As Director of Software Engineering, you will be leading an organisation of approximately 40 engineers and managers to tackle the deep distributed systems challenges that allow Elasticsearch to excel at scale. Your customers are every Elasticsearch user and each solution team which builds upon Elasticsearch.
Our company is distributed by intention. We hire the best engineers we can find wherever they are, whoever they are. As a result, our team is diverse and distributed across continents. We collaborate every day over email, GitHub, Zoom, and Slack. The ability to lead a distributed team is critical.
What You Will Be Doing
- Develop and execute a long-term engineering strategy for Elasticsearch's distributed systems, aligning technical priorities with product direction and business objectives.
- Drive improvements in performance, scalability, reliability and cost efficiency, including foundational capabilities supporting Serverless Elasticsearch.
- Lead the evolution of Elasticsearch's core distributed architecture, including cluster coordination, data allocation, indexing, replication and recovery.
- Provide technical leadership and oversight for complex engineering initiatives and programs, helping engineering managers and technical leaders navigate architectural decisions and competing priorities.
- Own engineering outcomes across your organisation, balancing technical complexity, customer impact, reliability, operational requirements and long-term maintainability.
- Lead, mentor, hire and develop engineering managers and senior technical leaders, establishing high performance standards and building a strong pipeline of future leaders, fostering an inclusive culture of collaboration and technical excellence.
- Take ownership of organisational planning, staffing and resource allocation, ensuring teams have the capabilities and support needed to deliver on strategic priorities.
- Partner with Product Management, engineering leaders and other teams across Elastic to define priorities and deliver complex initiatives spanning multiple engineering organisations.
- Act as a senior escalation point for critical technical and operational challenges, working closely with engineering, Support and SRE teams to drive effective resolution.
- Communicate engineering strategy, organisational priorities and progress to senior executives, influencing decisions that have a significant impact on Elastic and its customers.
- Run performance management with consistency (promotions, development plans, and managing underperformance through to resolution) and working with your managers to do the same.
What You Bring
- A proven track record of leading large-scale engineering organisations, including experience managing engineering managers and developing senior technical leaders.
- Previous hands-on software engineering experience, with strong computer science fundamentals and substantial technical depth in distributed systems.
- Extensive experience designing, building or operating complex, large-scale distributed systems, ideally involving database engines, distributed storage or large-scale data processing.
- Strong understanding of distributed systems concepts, including concurrency, consistency, replication, fault tolerance, recovery and performance optimisation.
- Experience establishing engineering strategy, making architectural trade-offs and delivering complex initiatives involving multiple teams and significant technical dependencies.
- A track record of building effective engineering organisations, including organisational planning, senior-level hiring, performance management and leadership development.
- Strong operational experience, with a deep understanding of system reliability, production troubleshooting and the challenges of operating distributed systems at scale.
- Experience partnering with senior engineering and product leaders to establish strategic priorities, allocate resources and deliver meaningful business outcomes.
- The ability to navigate complex organisational challenges, influence senior stakeholders and make informed decisions in situations with significant technical or business consequences.
- A compassionate approach to leadership, with a genuine commitment to coaching, developing and supporting the people you work with.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience presenting technical strategy and organisational priorities to senior executives.
Compensation for this role is in the form of base salary. This role does not have a variable compensation component.
The typical starting salary range for new hires in this role is listed below. In select locations (including Seattle WA, Los Angeles CA, the San Francisco Bay Area CA, and the New York City Metro Area), an alternate range may apply as specified below.
These ranges represent the lowest to highest salary we reasonably and in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range, and the ranges may be modified in the future.
An employee's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, performance, and business or organizational needs.
Elastic believes that employees should have the opportunity to share in the value that we create together for our shareholders. Therefore, in addition to cash compensation, this role is currently eligible to participate in Elastic's stock program. Our total rewards package also includes a company-matched 401k with dollar-for-dollar matching up to 6% of eligible earnings, along with a range of other benefits offered with a holistic emphasis on employee well-being.
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