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, including Ingress, security controls, private connectivity, and DNS management.

This is a high-impact role for an engineer who thrives on designing high-performance, scalable networking platforms and driving technical initiatives across a global organization.

What You Will Be Doing

• Technical Leadership: Set the technical direction for major networking initiatives, owning designs from proposal through to general availability.
• Development: Lead the development of Ingress, private connectivity, DNS, and security controls at scale for Elastic Cloud.
• Cross-Team Collaboration: Lead multi-quarter, cross-organizational projects, acting as a trusted technical advisor to product management and engineering stakeholders.
• Operational Excellence: Raise the quality of our services by leading complex incident investigations, reviews, and participating in on-call rotations.
• Mentorship: Support and mentor engineers, setting the standard for software craftsmanship and architectural clarity.
• Optimization: Proactively identify improvements to security, stability, and cost efficiency.

What You Bring

• Experience: Proven track record at the Staff or Principal level in building complex distributed systems running in production at scale.
• Networking Expertise: Deep knowledge of cloud-native architecture, Ingress, private connectivity, DNS, and security controls.
• Ownership: Ability to own projects from end-to-end, including technical design and cross-functional coordination.
• Reliability: Experience operating high-availability SaaS platforms and a strong focus on observability and testing.
• Communication: Ability to drive decisions and influence direction across teams without formal authority in a distributed environment.
• AI Proficiency: A track record of using AI to accelerate development and debug complex systems.

Bonus Points

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