Elastic

Open-Source Search & Observability — Distributed by Design

The consensus on Elastic: Choose Elastic if you want genuine remote-first culture across 40+ countries, meaningful open-source impact, and the rare combination of public-company stability with startup-era flexibility.

2012
Founded
Distributed
40+ Countries
~4,000
Employees
NYSE: ESTC
Public Company
Free Work at Elastic? Claim this profile
Update your company's culture data, respond to reviews, and feature your open roles prominently.
Culture Overview

What it's really like to work at Elastic

Elastic was distributed before remote was trendy. Founded in 2012 by the creators of Elasticsearch and contributors to Apache Lucene, the company has operated across time zones from day one. Their "Source Code" — a set of cultural values including "As YOU, Are," "Home, Dinner," and "Space, Time" — isn't marketing speak. It's operationalized in how they hire, onboard, and run meetings. Engineers get to work on widely-adopted open-source software used by Netflix, Uber, Wikipedia, and thousands more. The tradeoff: cross-timezone coordination means occasional odd-hours meetings, and recent leadership changes have introduced more process than the early days.

Glassdoor Ratings

Elastic Glassdoor Ratings & Employee Reviews

4.0
Overall Glassdoor Score
Based on 861 reviews
Culture & Values 4.0
Work-Life Balance 4.1
Compensation & Benefits 4.3
Overall Rating 4.0
77% Recommend to a Friend
Employee Review Themes

Working at Elastic: Pros & Cons

What employees love

  • Fully distributed from day one — genuine remote culture, not a pandemic afterthought
  • Open-source mission gives engineers real community impact beyond just shipping features
  • "Home, Dinner" is a core value — strong work-life balance baked into the culture
  • Competitive compensation with public-company RSUs and solid healthcare benefits

What could be better

  • Cross-timezone coordination means occasional 2am meetings for some regions
  • Recent leadership changes have introduced more micromanagement and oversight
  • Large company with 4,000 people — less startup energy than smaller peers
  • 13% layoff in Dec 2024 shook confidence and changed some team dynamics
Engineering Culture

How the engineering team works

Tech Stack

Java Go TypeScript Rust Lucene

Product

The Elastic Stack: Elasticsearch (search & analytics), Kibana (visualization), Beats (data shipping), and Elastic Agent. Powers search, observability, and security for thousands of organizations.

Open Source

Core contributor to Apache Lucene. Elasticsearch is one of the most widely-deployed open-source projects globally. Engineers contribute to community-visible code daily. Join the team →

Team Structure

Distributed engineering teams across 40+ countries. Async-first communication with overlap windows for synchronous collaboration. Teams own product areas end-to-end with significant autonomy.

Open Positions

Join the Elastic team

Explore open roles at Elastic below.

Get culture-matched jobs weekly

New roles from companies that actually care about how teams work. No spam, no recruiter BS.

Community Sentiment

What the community says about Elastic

Mostly Positive 5 mentions from Hacker News & Reddit · Updated 2026-04-21
“Two reasons: 1. My thighs are bigger than usual for my waist size, so I adapted. 2. Indians (Bharat) have a culture of wearing lose clothes, and I also like lose clothes. They are more comfortable.”
Hacker News shivekkhurana · 2026-04-10 View thread →
“Fast fashion forces you to dress for the masses. Loose shirts, baggy pants and shallow pockets is not fashion, its cost optimisation for brands.I didn't want to dress up like a boy. Me and my friend were in Paris when we got inspired by the floor(fashion_sense).”
Hacker News shivekkhurana · 2026-04-08 View thread →
“Over the last few years I've talked with hundreds of people in the dev community, and almost everyone shared the same concern: there's no sustainable funding for critical OSS maintenance, and without it the modern world runs on an increasingly fragile foundation.”
Hacker News kvinogradov · 2026-02-26 View thread →
“Sure,and, cards on the table, I will not redact company names because I don't really see the point, these are my experiences not rumours.”
Hacker News dijit · 2026-01-13 View thread →

Sentiment data refreshed daily from public Hacker News and Reddit discussions. See all company profiles →

🏢

Claim Elastic

Take ownership of your company's culture profile. Update your data, respond to community sentiment, and feature your open roles to candidates who care about culture.

Request received!

We'll review your request and get back to you within 24 hours at the email you provided.