Director - IT Software Engineering at Elastic

Job description

Elastic, the Search AI Company, enables everyone to find the answers they need in real time, using all their data, at scale — unleashing the potential of businesses and people. The Elastic Search AI Platform, used by more than 50% of the Fortune 500, brings together the precision of search and the intelligence of AI to enable everyone to accelerate the results that matter. By taking advantage of all structured and unstructured data — securing and protecting private information more effectively — Elastic’s complete, cloud-based solutions for search, security, and observability help organizations deliver on the promise of AI. What is the role? The enterprise software landscape is undergoing a structural shift. AI-assisted development has dropped the cost and time required to build custom internal tools by more than half. Retool's 2026 State of Internal Software report found that 35% of enterprises have already replaced SaaS tools with purpose-built software, and 78% plan to build more in the year ahead. The calculus has changed: what previously required a six-figure vendor contract and a year-long implementation is now a small engineering team and a few focused sprints. Elastic is at the beginning of this journey. We operate the Elastic Stack — Elasticsearch, Kibana, Elastic ML, and a growing set of AI-native capabilities — at production scale for thousands of customers. And we are increasingly building on our own platform internally: replacing expensive SaaS tools with Elastic-native systems that are faster, more intelligent, and owned entirely by us. We are looking for a Director, IT Engineering to join our Information Technology team to lead this effort. This is not a passive IT management role or a SaaS administration leadership position. It is a high-impact engineering leadership role where you will manage a small, agile team of engineers who look at $500,000 annual SaaS contracts, ask: 'Could we build a better version of this on Elasticsearch in twelve weeks?' — and execute. This is a rare opportunity to lead original product engineering inside an IT organization, working with a platform that most engineers only get to use as a customer — and to build systems that directly shape how a public company operates. What You Will Be Doing: Lead strategic build-vs-buy engineering Work with IT leadership, Finance, and Engineering to evaluate Elastic's internal SaaS portfolio and identify where custom-built systems — backed by Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Elastic's AI capabilities — deliver better value than continued vendor contracts. Own the architectural oversight, build plan, and overall delivery of the highest-priority replacements. Lead a high-performing engineering team Build, mentor, and lead a small, focused team of software engineers executing on internal tool replacements and Elastic-native platforms. Manage delivery roadmaps, unblock your team, and balance engineering rigor with rapid execution speed. Design & build Elastic-native internal Platforms: Guide your team in designing and delivering systems across five primary focus areas: Platform productivity tools: Internal developer portals, knowledge search layers, engineering onboarding systems, and workspace tooling that unifies disparate SaaS tools into a single Elasticsearch-backed search and intelligence layer. FinOps and AI cost governance: A consolidated cost visibility and anomaly detection system across Elastic's AI providers (Anthropic, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Google Gemini) and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), replacing commercial FinOps SaaS with an Elastic ML-powered alternative. IT service management: Evaluating and building replacements for commercially purchased SaaS products including incident management, knowledge base search, internal developer portal, and SIEM-correlated security workflows, using Elastic Observability and Elastic Security as the backbone. Enterprise efficiency systems: Custom tooling that reduces manual process overhead across IT, Finance, HR, Legal and Operations, using the LLM Gateway, RAG pipelines, and Elasticsearch as the data and intelligence layer. New use cases : New use cases that traditionally SaaS paid services did not address and can now be built with AI native architecture. Set the engineering standard Establish and own the architectural standards, design patterns, and engineering practices for all IT platform engineering work. Define how internal systems are built — data models, API design, observability, cost governance, security posture — and serve as the engineering authority for your team. Collaborate across the company Partner closely with Elastic's IT infrastructure team, the Security organization (Elastic Security is your SIEM backbone), the Platform Engineering team, and Finance. Engage with tool owners across the company to understand requirements, challenge assumptions about what needs to be bought versus built, and ensure that the systems your team builds actually get used. Dogfood and validate Elastic's own products Run Elastic's own technology in the most demanding possible context: as the engineering leader responsible for the internal systems that the company depends on every day. Every system your team builds is a reference architecture. Ensure that insights generated about what works and what doesn't feed directly into Elastic's product and go-to-market strategy. What You Bring Required experience 12+ years of software engineering experience, including experience managing or leading direct engineering reports or small engineering teams. Hands-on familiarity and technical capability with Elasticsearch — data modeling, query design, aggregations, performance tuning, and production operations. Proven track record of guiding full-stack engineering delivery end-to-end, from Logstash ingest pipelines to Kibana dashboards to React frontends. Proven track record of building, shipping, and managing commercial software or platform systems — not just maintaining existing ones. Architectural judgment: the ability to scope a problem correctly, choose the right components, and make executive calls on when to build versus integrate versus buy. Strong written communication to author architecture decision records, engineering standards documents, executive proposals, and build-vs-buy analyses. Valued experience Experience leading teams that build on the Elastic Stack beyond basic logging — Elastic ML, ELSER semantic search, vector search, Kibana Canvas, Watcher, or Elastic Security. Experience with FinOps practices: cloud cost management, LLM API cost attribution, or building cost visibility tooling. Familiarity with Information Technology managed systems — understanding the core domain problems solved by platforms like Salesforce or ServiceNow. Experience working in a hypergrowth or post-IPO technology company where engineering rigor and business speed have to coexist. Experience with LLM integration patterns: RAG pipelines, prompt engineering for enterprise use cases, LLM gateway design, or AI-powered workflow automation. Contributions to internal developer experience, platform engineering, or engineering productivity tooling. What This Role Is Not Not a SaaS administrator or vendor manager: This is an engineering execution role, not a role for managing third-party vendor contracts, Salesforce admins, or ServiceNow developers. Not a pure infrastructure or DevOps role: Your team uses cloud infrastructure, but the primary deliverable is production-grade software systems, not infrastructure configuration. Not a hands-off hands-free manager: While you will manage a small team, you are expected to stay deep in the architecture, review code, and set technical directions hands-on. Not a role for rigid processes: Projects begin with open-ended questions ('Could we build this?') and require you and your team to define and ship the answer. Compensation for this role is in the form of base salary. This role does not have a variable compensation component. The typical starting salary range for new hires in this role is listed below. In select locations (including Seattle WA, Los Angeles CA, the San Francisco Bay Area CA, and the New York City Metro Area), an alternate range may apply as specified below. These ranges represent the lowest to highest salary we reasonably and in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range, and the ranges may be modified in the future. An employee's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, performance, and business or organizational needs. Elastic believes that employees should have the opportunity to share in the value that we create together for our shareholders. Therefore, in addition to cash compensation, this role is currently eligible to participate in Elastic's stock program. Our total rewards package also includes a company-matched 401k with dollar-for-dollar matching up to 6% of eligible earnings, along with a range of other benefits offered with a holistic emphasis on employee well-being. The typical starting salary range for this role is: $199,700 — $315,900 USD The typical starting salary range for this role in the select locations listed above is: $239,800 — $379,300 USD 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 Increase your impact - We match up to $2000 (or local currency equivalent) for financial donations and service Up to 40 hours each year to use toward volunteer projects you love Embracing parenthood with minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave Different people approach problems differently. We need that. Elastic is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to creating an inclusive culture that celebrates different perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other basis protected by federal, state or local law, ordinance or regulation. We welcome individuals with disabilities and strive to create an accessible and inclusive experience for all individuals. To request an accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please email candidate_accessibility@elastic.co . We will reply to your request within 24 business hours of submission. Applicants have rights under Federal Employment Laws, view posters linked below: Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Poster; Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision Poster; Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) Poster and Know Your Rights (Poster) Elasticsearch develops and distributes technology and information that is subject to U.S. and other countries’ export controls and licensing requirements for individuals who are located in or are nationals of the following sanctioned countries and regions: Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, or Russia, including the Ukrainian territories annexed by Russia (The Crimea region of Ukraine, The Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), The Luhansk People's Republic (LNR), Kherson or Zaporizhzhia). If you are located in or are a national of one of the listed countries or regions, an export license may be required as a condition of your employment in this role. Please note that national origin and/or nationality do not affect eligibility for employment with Elastic. Please see here for our Privacy Statement.

Requirements

Must-haves

Lead strategic build-vs-buy engineering
Own the architectural oversight, build plan, and overall delivery of the highest-priority replacements.
Lead a high-performing engineering team
Build, mentor, and lead a small, focused team of software engineers executing on internal tool replacements and Elastic-native platforms.
Manage delivery roadmaps, unblock your team, and balance engineering rigor with rapid execution speed.
Design & build Elastic-native internal Platforms: Guide your team in designing and delivering systems across five primary focus areas:
Enterprise efficiency systems: Custom tooling that reduces manual process overhead across IT, Finance, HR, Legal and Operations, using the LLM Gateway, RAG pipelines, and Elasticsearch as the data and intelligence layer.
New use cases : New use cases that traditionally SaaS paid services did not address and can now be built with AI native architecture.
Set the engineering standard
Establish and own the architectural standards, design patterns, and engineering practices for all IT platform engineering work.
Define how internal systems are built — data models, API design, observability, cost governance, security posture — and serve as the engineering authority for your team.
Collaborate across the company
Partner closely with Elastic's IT infrastructure team, the Security organization (Elastic Security is your SIEM backbone), the Platform Engineering team, and Finance.
Engage with tool owners across the company to understand requirements, challenge assumptions about what needs to be bought versus built, and ensure that the systems your team builds actually get used.
Dogfood and validate Elastic's own products
Run Elastic's own technology in the most demanding possible context: as the engineering leader responsible for the internal systems that the company depends on every day.
Every system your team builds is a reference architecture. Ensure that insights generated about what works and what doesn't feed directly into Elastic's product and go-to-market strategy.
12+ years of software engineering experience, including experience managing or leading direct engineering reports or small engineering teams.
Hands-on familiarity and technical capability with Elasticsearch — data modeling, query design, aggregations, performance tuning, and production operations.
Proven track record of guiding full-stack engineering delivery end-to-end, from Logstash ingest pipelines to Kibana dashboards to React frontends.
Proven track record of building, shipping, and managing commercial software or platform systems — not just maintaining existing ones.
Architectural judgment: the ability to scope a problem correctly, choose the right components, and make executive calls on when to build versus integrate versus buy.
Strong written communication to author architecture decision records, engineering standards documents, executive proposals, and build-vs-buy analyses.
Valued experience

Nice-to-haves

None flagged.

Application prep

Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.

Keywords to mirror

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Platform: greenhouse
Effort: quick

Benefits

Benefits detected in the listing.

Vision

401k

Parental Leave