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Director of Software Engineering - Distributed Systems, Serverless - Elasticsearch

Elastic· Platform - Elasticsearch
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Remote$199.7k - $315.9kfull-timePosted 3w ago

About the role

Director of Software Engineering leading the Elasticsearch Distributed Systems organization with a focus on scale, performance, and resilience, particularly for Serverless Elasticsearch. Oversees ~40 engineers and managers, driving strategy, architecture, and outcomes across distributed systems.

Responsibilities

  • 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.

Qualifications

  • 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.

Skills

Required:Distributed systems design and architectureLeadership of engineering organizations

Benefits

  • Elastic’s stock program eligibility
  • Company-matched 401k with dollar-for-dollar matching up to 6% of eligible earnings
  • Flexible locations and schedules for many roles
  • Generous vacation days
  • Donation matching up to $2000 (or local currency equivalent)
  • Up to 40 hours per year for volunteer projects
  • Parental leave minimum of 16 weeks
  • Health coverage for you and your family in many locations
Last updated Oct 1, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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