Principal Software Engineer I

Description

The company, 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. By taking advantage of all structured and unstructured data — securing and protecting private information more effectively — the company’s complete, cloud-based solutions for search, security, and observability help organizations deliver on the promise of AI.

What Is The Role :

Billing powers the company's Cloud business. It runs across AWS, GCP, and Azure in over 50 regions. We oversee usage-based metering, consumption billing, and marketplace integrations at global scale.

The Billing Experience team owns the customer-facing layer of our billing systems. We build and maintain the public and internal APIs, as well as the billing and account pages within the company Cloud consoles. Our goal is to make it easy for customers and internal teams to understand and manage their billing data.

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to drive technical direction within the Billing Experience domain. This is a hands-on role. You will design APIs, shape user-facing systems, and work across teams. You will help our billing services grow in scale, reliability, and developer productivity. You will work closely with Product, Design, SRE, and Cloud Infrastructure teams.

What You Will Be Doing :

Own complex billing and account management systems, including public APIs, internal APIs, and Cloud console experiences.

Lead API design and evolution — set standards for contract stability, versioning, and developer experience across internal and external consumers.

Build and improve full-stack features in the company Cloud consoles, from backend services to frontend billing and account UIs.

Improve observability, incident response, and reliability of billing-facing services using modern DevOps practices.

Shape system architecture for scale and modularity. Guide service design, API structure, and data modeling.

Work with SRE and Cloud teams to improve deployment, monitoring, and CI/CD pipelines.

Be the go-to technical reviewer for the billing experience stack. Maintain technical consistency and quality standards.

Mentor engineers and tech leads across the Billing organization. Help raise the bar on design and operational standards.

Work with Product, Design, and Finance to set roadmap priorities. Make sure plans are feasible and aligned with business goals.

Take part in on-call rotations. Make sure systems are production-ready through automation, resilience testing, and alerting.

What You Bring :

8+ years in backend or full-stack engineering, with solid skills in API design and development.

Proven experience building and maintaining developer-facing or customer-facing APIs at scale.

Solid background in cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including networking, IAM, monitoring, and deployment.

Experience with frontend technologies used in console or dashboard products is a plus (React or similar).

Ability to lead multi-quarter projects across teams — building consensus and delivering results.

Track record of mentoring engineers, setting technical direction, and raising engineering standards.

Experience with SaaS billing, metering, or financial systems is a real plus.

Clear written and verbal communication skills. Able to influence across teams and speak to both technical and non-technical partners.

Comfortable working on your own in a global, distributed, and async environment.

Able to work across projects, collaborate across functions and teams, and adapt to changing team structures.

Track record of using AI to accelerate up development, debug complex systems, and improve code quality — while owning the outcomes.

Eligible to work in Department of Defense (DoD) Impact Level 4 or above cloud service environments.

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.

The company 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 the company'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:

$159,800 - $252,800 USD

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

$191,900 - $303,500 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, the company 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

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 the company's site . 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 the company.

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