Control Plane - Serverless Core - Software Engineering Manager

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 Control Plane Serverless Team builds and maintains the platform that allows Elastic’s products and customers to enjoy a flawless experience. We focus on abstracting away the complexities of the underlying environment so our users can focus on what matters most to them. Our team is responsible for the critical services and domains—like Kubernetes controllers and internal APIs—that orchestrate global deployments. We are builders at heart!

Are you a leader who is a manager first, but still loves to dive into the technical details of distributed systems? We seek an Engineering Manager to guide a team that is responsible for a key portion of our Serverless Control Plane. We need someone who can truly understand the "how" and "why" of the work to ensure our services remain robust as we scale together.

We are a distributed team, with about half of us based in Europe. To make sure we have enough time to collaborate in real-time, we are looking for teammates in EMEA or the Americas. If you’re in the Americas, we have a preference for the Eastern Timezone (EST) so we can maintain that "golden window" of collaboration with our European colleagues.

What You Will Be Doing:

• People & Talent Management: We believe in leading and empowering our people. You will mentor a team of versatile software engineers, encouraging a culture that is committed to performance, psychological safety, and continuous learning! You will be responsible for the entire employee lifecycle, from your first hire to helping your team members reach their next promotion.
• Strategy & Execution: How do we turn big ideas into reality? You’ll work with our Product and Control Plane Leadership teams to navigate planning cycles, working together to translate business requirements into clear engineering achievements. You’ll act as a bridge, ensuring our APIs and services meet the needs of our internal customers while we maintain the integrity of the platform.
• Technical & Operational Leadership: We take full accountability for our services. You’ll partner with your Technical Lead to facilitate technical discussions, navigate trade-offs, and drive the team to build balanced, high-quality services. You will also be part of our Incident Commander (IC) on-call rotation, providing leadership during critical service disruptions to keep our platform production-ready.

What You Bring:

• Management Experience: 2+ years of experience leading people, with a focus on mentoring and talent development.
• Technical Foundation: A background in Software Engineering, SRE, or DevOps that allows you to read code and guide senior engineers through problems.
• Golang Proficiency: While you will not be shipping code to production, familiarity with Golang patterns and software engineering best practices is important to us, as our entire part of the stack is built on it.
• Strategic Approach: Experience helping a team plan its roadmap and forecast capacity in a fast-paced environment.
• Distributed Leadership: Experience leading remote, asynchronous teams across different time zones and countries.
• Communication: A knack for explaining technical strategy and progress to all kinds of interested parties, whether they are technical or not.

Bonus Points:

• Elastic Stack Expertise: Prior experience with Elasticsearch, Kibana, or deployment models like ECK and ECE.
• Cloud-Native Depth: Practical experience with Kubernetes Operators, CRDs, or GitOps (Argo CD) as well as experience with one of the main public CSPs (GCP, AWS, Azure).
• Operational Automation: Proficiency in building GitHub Actions, Dashboards, and/or custom tools to streamline project management and reporting.
• SaaS at Scale: Previous success leading teams that support high-scale, multi-tenant global platforms.

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

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 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 country 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, Russia, Syria, the Crimea Region of Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic (“DNR”), and the Luhansk People’s Republic (“LNR”). 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.

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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:

$133,100—$210,600 USD

The typical starting salary range for this role in the select locations listed above is:

$159,900—$252,900 USD