Principal Software Engineer - Global UX - Application - Platform

Elastic is hiring a Principal Software Engineer to act as tech lead for its Global UX engineering team, the group behind Elastic UI (EUI), Elastic's design system and React component library. The role is hands-on: you will write and review code, make the hard architectural calls, and be the senior technical voice connecting design intent to component architecture. It is based in Spain.

EUI underpins the UI of every major Elastic product, so this job is for someone who has built or led design systems at scale and can align a team, a roadmap, and a community of internal consumers around a shared direction.

What you will do

• Set technical direction for EUI across component architecture, API design, theming, accessibility, and long-term maintainability for a design system used by many product teams.
• Own the hardest decisions: composable component patterns, breaking-change and migration strategy, versioning, token architecture, and the tradeoffs between flexibility and consistency.
• Lead the Global UX engineering team day to day — setting technical standards, reviewing designs, unblocking engineers, and keeping the work aligned to a coherent long-term architecture.
• Work with design leadership to turn design language, visual direction, and interaction patterns into reusable, well-documented component APIs.
• Drive adoption across Elastic by working directly with consuming teams, understanding their constraints, and evolving EUI's APIs and documentation so adoption is easy rather than forced.
• Raise the bar on accessibility, performance, and cross-browser correctness for shared UI building blocks.
• Mentor engineers through code review, design critique, and pairing, and help develop the next generation of senior and staff-level engineers.
• Represent the Global UX team in cross-functional planning with product, design, and engineering leadership, and make the case for investment in design system health and developer experience.
• Use profiling, telemetry, and feedback from consuming teams to find where the design system creates friction, then lead the work to fix it.
• Explore how AI can improve the design-to-code workflow — component generation from design specs, automated accessibility checks, AI-assisted migration tooling — while holding a high bar for the quality and correctness of shipped components.

What they are looking for

• Deep, hands-on experience building and operating React and TypeScript component libraries or design systems in production, with many internal or external consumers.
• A track record of technical leadership: setting architecture, raising quality standards across a team, and making decisions other engineers align behind without formal authority.
• Experience designing composable component APIs, including compound components, render props, headless components, and theming/token systems.
• Strong instincts for accessibility (WCAG, semantic HTML, keyboard and screen-reader behavior) and a record of building that rigor into a team's default practices.
• Experience managing the lifecycle of a widely-used library: releases, breaking changes, deprecation and migration paths, and documentation that keeps adoption smooth.
• Ability to partner directly with designers and design leadership, translating visual and interaction intent into technical constraints and component contracts.
• Good judgment about when to invest in reusable abstractions versus one-off solutions, and the communication skills to explain those tradeoffs to engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
• A history of mentoring engineers and raising a team's technical level through code review, design docs, and pragmatic, hands-on leadership.
• Experience working transparently in a distributed team: clear written communication, async-first collaboration, and open-source or open development practices.
• Curiosity about how AI can improve design system workflows, paired with the judgment to hold a high bar for correctness and quality.

Pay and benefits

Compensation is base salary only, with no variable component. The typical starting salary range for this role is €80,400–€127,200 EUR. Elastic says ranges are set using external market benchmarks, internal pay equity, and the responsibilities and complexity of each role, and that the final offer depends on relevant experience, skills and expertise, alignment with the role requirements, and the scope and complexity of the position.

Benefits include competitive pay based on the work you do rather than your previous salary, health coverage for you and your family in many locations, flexible locations and schedules for many roles, a generous number of vacation days each year, matching of up to $2000 (or local currency equivalent) for financial donations and service, up to 40 hours a year for volunteer projects, and a minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave.

About Elastic

Elastic describes itself as the Search AI Company, enabling people to find the answers they need in real time using all their data at scale. Its Search AI Platform is used by more than 50% of the Fortune 500, and its cloud-based solutions cover search, security, and observability. Elastic is a distributed company and an equal opportunity employer committed to an inclusive culture that celebrates different perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds.

Applicants with disabilities can request an accommodation during the application or recruiting process by emailing ; Elastic says it will reply within 24 business hours of submission.