This role pays more than
67%
of similar roles. Most pay
$197,750–$275,300
— the shaded band above.
At the midpoint, this role pays about
$258k
versus about
$237k
for comparable roles.
Based on 240 similar postings.
Employer
About Elastic
Elastic is the company behind Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash). It sells search, observability, and security products built on that search engine, primarily through its Elastic Cloud managed service.
Elastic currently has
44 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$159,800–$252,800
across 43 roles with salary data.
Director of Software Engineering - Distributed Systems, Serverless - Elasticsearch leads the Elasticsearch Distributed Systems organization to ensure scale, performance, and resilience within the company's serverless offering. This leader manages approximately 40 engineers and managers, overseeing the evolution of core distributed architecture including cluster coordination, data allocation, indexing, replication, and recovery. The role involves developing long-term engineering strategies, managing technical debt, and driving improvements in cost efficiency and reliability. Candidates must possess deep expertise in distributed systems concepts such as concurrency, consistency, fault tolerance, and performance optimization. Experience is required in building or operating large-scale distributed systems like database engines or distributed storage. The successful candidate will navigate complex architectural trade-offs while mentoring leaders and managing organizational planning to solve critical infrastructure challenges for the Elasticsearch platform across various product areas.
Develop and execute a long-term engineering strategy for Elasticsearch's distributed systems aligned with product goals.
Drive improvements in performance, scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency for the Serverless offering.
Lead the evolution of core distributed architecture including cluster coordination, data allocation, indexing, and replication.
Provide technical oversight for complex initiatives while helping managers navigate architectural decisions and priorities.
Manage organizational planning, staffing, and resource allocation to ensure teams meet strategic goals.
Mentor, hire, and develop a high-performing team of engineering managers and senior technical leaders.
Act as the senior escalation point for critical technical and operational challenges across engineering and SRE teams.
Communicate engineering strategy and progress to senior executives to influence high-level business decisions.
What we're looking for
Proven track record of leading large-scale engineering organizations, including managing managers and developing senior technical leaders.
Previous hands-on software engineering experience with strong computer science fundamentals and substantial depth in distributed systems.
Extensive experience designing, building, or operating complex, large-scale distributed systems such as database engines or distributed storage.
Strong understanding of distributed systems concepts including concurrency, consistency, replication, fault tolerance, recovery, and performance optimization.
Experience establishing engineering strategy, making architectural trade-offs, and delivering complex initiatives involving multiple teams and dependencies.
Proven ability in organizational planning, senior-level hiring, performance management, and leadership development.
Strong operational experience with a deep understanding of system reliability and production troubleshooting for distributed systems at scale.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills to present technical strategy and priorities to senior executives.