Senior Software Engineer - Streams - Observability

About the Role

The Observability Streams team at Elastic is building Elastic's unified data pipeline—the layer connecting data sources to where data lands, with complete control over how it is processed and routed along the way. Whether collecting metrics from cloud accounts, shipping logs from agents, or routing traces across destinations, Streams ties it all together.

The Streams Backend team is responsible for backend services powering this pipeline, ensuring data is routed, processed, and delivered reliably and efficiently at scale. The team also owns Logstash, the open-source streaming ETL tool trusted globally, and regularly contributes to the OpenTelemetry Collector.

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Streams Backend team, you will help drive the design and development of new features across the Streams Backend service and Logstash, contribute to OpenTelemetry Collector, and support users and enterprise customers.

What You Will Be Doing

• Designing and implementing new features for Logstash and its plugins in Java and JRuby.
• Designing, building, and operating core backend services for the Streams program in Golang.
• Adding new features and contributing to the OpenTelemetry Collector in Golang.
• Solving challenging distributed systems problems at scale.
• Maintaining, updating, and improving existing codebases and dependencies with automated test coverage.
• Engaging with public GitHub repositories and community forums.
• Providing Pull Request reviews and mentorship to peers.
• Collaborating with cross-functional teams to drive product milestones.
• Partnering with customer support teams to resolve issues, including participating in an on-call rotation.

What You Bring

• Demonstrated ability to thrive in a remote-first, highly distributed environment with clear written and verbal communication.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and debugging skills for complex distributed systems.
• Expertise in at least one of Java, Golang, or Ruby, with a willingness and adaptability to work across different codebases.
• A proven track record of using AI tools to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code while maintaining ownership of outcomes.

Bonus Points

• Familiarity with observability tools and telemetry concepts (metrics, logs, traces), especially OpenTelemetry.
• Hands-on experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience with JRuby development.
• Background in open-source software development.
• Knowledge of stream processing platforms (e.g., Kafka), databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL), and networking protocols (TCP, UDP, HTTP).
• Exposure to the Elastic stack.

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary Range: €55.800—€88.300 EUR
• Health coverage for you and your family in many locations
• Flexible work schedule and remote-first setup
• Generous paid vacation days
• Charitable donation and volunteer matching (up to $2,000 / 40 hours per year)
• Minimum of 16 weeks paid parental leave