Principal Software Engineer - Kubernetes

Elastic is a search company built on a free and open heritage. Anyone can use Elastic products and solutions to get started quickly and frictionlessly. Elastic offers three solutions for enterprise search, observability, and security, built on one technology stack that can be deployed anywhere. From finding documents to monitoring infrastructure to hunting for threats, Elastic makes data usable in real time and at scale. Thousands of organizations worldwide, including Cisco, eBay, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, The Mayo Clinic, NASA, The New York Times, Wikipedia, and Verizon, use Elastic to power mission-critical systems. Founded in 2012, Elastic is a distributed company with Elasticians around the globe and is publicly traded on the NYSE under the symbol ESTC. Learn more at elastic.co.

About the team, project and role:

Elastic Cloud is a fully managed service for the Elastic Stack, Security, Observability, and Enterprise Search solutions, and we’re looking for a technical leader to join our Kubernetes team. 

Our journey with Kubernetes started back in 2018 when we released official Helm charts and joined CNCF. Roughly a year later, we took it to the next level and launched a dedicated operator with the goal for it to be the best way to run the Elastic Stack on K8s, if you don’t mind opening a terminal and writing a CRD. The operator is now mature and we are ready to take it even further: a product we call Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK) that allows our customers to offer a UI based, fully interactive way to run Elastic’s software on their K8s clusters. Our goal for ECK is to be able to run a global SaaS offering, at Elastic Cloud scale - multiple cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure, and more) with a presence in dozens of regions. 

And right now, we are looking for a seasoned engineer to join and lead the technical aspects, including strategy and design, of the project. Expect to manage projects across several sub teams and coordinate efforts. This role will be in direct line of sight to our leadership and you will have a task in communicating progress and status to stakeholders.

What you will bring along:

• You have proven experience providing pragmatic technical leadership for a large group of engineers on complex and large scale projects.
• You have a strong technical understanding of Kubernetes. We strongly believe that to properly build on top of a framework, you need to know how its internals work.
• You have a strong understanding of where Kubernetes is heading. We are in for the long run. We want to build a product that builds to Kubernetes strength and lifts on the work that is done in the project. 
• You are able to reason about complex software architectures, understanding the trade-offs, and the dynamics between its components. You should be able to reason at a high level and zoom in on the details when needed. 
• Lead by example - you should be able to code when needed, review PRs and stay close to the team’s work. 
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Ego-free attitude — we are here for the success of the team and the company

What would be great in addition:

• Experience supporting customer problems and communication
• Experience or interest in speaking/presenting at tech conferences.
• Experience in building your own orchestration software
• Experience at Open source projects and companies
• Experience in communication and organization in large, distributed teams

Additional Information - We Take Care of Our People

As a distributed company, diversity drives our identity. Whether you’re looking to launch a new career or grow an existing one, Elastic is the type of company where you can balance great work with great life. Your age is only a number. It doesn’t matter if you’re just out of college or your children are; we need you for what you can do.

We strive to have parity of benefits across regions and while regulations differ from place to place, we believe taking care of our people is the right thing to do.

• Competitive pay based on the work you do here and not your previous salary
• Health coverage for you and your family in many locations
• Ability to craft your calendar with flexible locations and schedules for many roles
• Generous number of vacation days each year
• Double your charitable giving - We match up to $1500 (or local currency equivalent)
• Up to 40 hours each year to use toward volunteer projects you love
• Embracing parenthood with minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave