Principal Software Engineer (Application Networking) - Platform Infrastructure

About the Role

Elastic is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join our Platform Infrastructure team, specifically focusing on Application Networking. You will define the future of Elastic Cloud's networking, covering Ingress, security controls, private connectivity, and DNS management. This is a high-impact role where you will drive technical vision and architecture for the systems that power the entire Elastic stack.

What You Will Be Doing

• Technical Leadership: Set the direction for major networking initiatives, owning designs from proposal to general availability.
• System Development: Lead the development of Ingress, private connectivity, and DNS at scale for Elastic Cloud.
• Operational Excellence: Raise the bar for service quality, lead complex incident investigations, and participate in on-call rotations.
• Mentorship: Act as a subject matter expert, mentor engineers, and set standards for software craftsmanship across the organization.
• Strategic Partnership: Advise product management and senior leadership on technical trade-offs, feasibility, and roadmap planning.
• Innovation: Champion improvements in security, stability, and cost efficiency.

What You Bring

• Proven experience at the Staff or Principal level building complex, distributed systems in production.
• Deep expertise in application networking and cloud-native architecture (Ingress, DNS, security controls).
• Experience building large-scale distributed systems from the ground up rather than relying solely on off-the-shelf services.
• Strong ability to own projects end-to-end, including technical design and cross-team collaboration.
• Experience operating high-availability SaaS platforms and improving reliability through observability and testing.
• Ability to work autonomously and influence direction across teams without formal authority.

Bonus Points

• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes networking (Cilium, external-dns, Envoy Gateway, Crossplane).
• Experience with major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, or GCP) networking ecosystems.
• Contributions to CNCF or other open-source networking projects.