Senior Software Engineer - Streams - Observability

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 Observability Streams team at Elastic is building Elastic's unified data pipeline - the layer that connects where your data comes from to where it lands, with full control over how it's processed and routed along the way. Whether you're collecting metrics from cloud accounts, shipping logs from agents, or routing traces to different destinations, Streams is what ties it all together.

The Streams Backend team is responsible for the backend services powering this pipeline, ensuring data is routed, processed, and delivered efficiently and reliably at scale. We also own Logstash, the open-source streaming ETL tool (and the “L” in the “ELK stack”) trusted by enterprises worldwide to move and transform data, and we are regular contributors 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 the OpenTelemetry Collector, and support our users and enterprise customers.

Our team is distributed across the globe, and we communicate mostly through Slack, GitHub, email and Zoom.

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 making contributions to the Open Telemetry Collector in Golang.
• Solving hard distributed systems problems at scale.
• Maintaining, updating and improving existing code and dependencies while ensuring automated test coverage.
• Engaging with multiple public GitHub repositories and community forums.
• Providing Pull Request reviews and guidance to your peers.
• Collaborating with other teams to drive product goals.
• Working together with the support organization to help our customers, which will also include participating in an on‑call rotation.

What You Bring:

• Ability to work in a remote-first, highly distributed environment, with top‑notch verbal and written communication.
• Proficient analytical, problem‑solving, debugging skills and ability to find efficient solutions.
• Critical thinking, positivity, autonomy and adaptability.
• Expertise in at least one of Java, Golang and Ruby, and willingness to learn and work with the others and ability to adapt to regularly working in different codebases.
• Clear written communication and the ability to work proficiently in a remote-first, highly distributed team.
• A proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code, while still owning the final outcomes.

Bonus Points:

• Familiarity with observability tools and concepts (tracing, metrics, logging), especially experience with or interest in OpenTelemetry
• Hands‑on experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
• JRuby development
• Open source software development
• Knowledge of stream processing platforms (such as Kafka), database technologies (e.g., Postgres or MySQL) and network technologies (e.g., TCP, UDP and HTTP).
• Exposure to the Elastic stack.

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 a minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave

Security & Privacy Responsibilities: Take ownership of protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of organizational data and systems by following applicable privacy and security policies, standards, and procedures. Ensure that all individual contributions follow Elastic’s Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF). Proactively participate in mandatory role-based training to ensure personal technical execution consistently aligns with the highest standards of data protection, data privacy, and system resilience.

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 [email protected]. We will reply to your request within 24 business hours of submission.

Applicants have rights under Federal Employment Laws and can view the following posters linked below:

Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Poster

Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) 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.

Compensation for this role is in the form of base salary. This role does not have a variable compensation component.

At Elastic, our compensation philosophy aims to provide fair, competitive and transparent remuneration. Salary ranges are established based on a combination of external market benchmarks, internal pay equity considerations, and the responsibilities and complexity associated with each role. This approach helps ensure consistency across comparable roles while remaining competitive within the relevant labour markets.

The typical starting salary range for this role is:

€55.800—€88.300 EUR