Principal Software Engineer - Security - Elasticsearch
Referral Board
$159,800–$252,800
Jul 23, 2026
—
Jul 24, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A principal-level engineering role focused on the security layer of a large-scale distributed search engine. Day-to-day work spans designing and building authentication, authorization, and tenant isolation systems, optimizing cryptographic and access-control mechanisms for distributed environments, and driving vulnerability management in collaboration with an InfoSec team. The role suits a senior Java engineer with deep experience in scalable RBAC/ABAC models, distributed systems security, and identity protocols such as OAuth 2.0 and SAML.
Principal level · Remote · Full-time
Pay in the description: $159,800–$252,800
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 840 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 310–1,100
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
What the occupation pays Median $138,970 (middle half $107,524–$175,762). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (5)
The role is distributed/fully remote; Elastic lists several alternate salary ranges for select high-cost metros (Seattle WA, Los Angeles CA, San Francisco Bay Area CA, New York City Metro Area: $191,900–$303,500 USD). The base range of $159,800–$252,800 USD is used here as the primary figure; the metro CBSA is set to San Francisco Bay Area as the most prominent named alternate location, but the role is not tied to any single geography.
No overall years-of-experience floor is stated explicitly; seniority is inferred from the Principal title and the org-wide architectural scope described (leading architecture across Elasticsearch's core security engine, driving vulnerability management, mentoring engineers).
TLS/PKI, FedRAMP, FIPS 140, SOC 2, and Elasticsearch internals all appear under the 'Bonus Points' section and are marked preferred accordingly.
The role sits at the boundary of Software Developer (15-1252) and Information Security Analyst (15-1212); primary day-to-day work is building and architecting security features inside the Elasticsearch engine (writing high-performance Java code, designing auth/authz systems), which points to 15-1252 as the primary SOC, with 15-1212 as a meaningful runner-up given the security-first scope.
Compensation is base salary only; the posting explicitly states there is no variable compensation component. Equity (RSUs) and a 401k match are offered as additional benefits.
Read the full posting
The employer publishes the full description on their own site — read it there ↗. Or sign in to read it here — it's free, and it also lets you track this application.