ELK Expert - Platform Engineering
First seen by Alion on Sep 7, 2026.
Role Summary :
We are looking for an experienced ELK Expert (6 - 12 years) to architect, optimize, secure, and operate large-scale Elasticsearch clusters and logging/observability platforms. The role involves designing scalable data pipelines, ensuring high search performance, managing upgrades, and maintaining compliance-driven logging standards.
Key Responsibilities :
Platform Architecture & Design :
- Define and optimize Elasticsearch cluster architecture, including node roles, shard allocation, replication strategy, and hot-warm-cold tiering (ILM).
- Design index patterns, mappings, and retention policies to support scalability and compliance.
Performance Optimization :
- Tune queries, analyzers, indexing pipelines, and caching strategies.
- Maintain low-latency search SLAs by optimizing cluster load, heap, GC, and resource allocation.
- Oversee performance benchmarking and capacity planning.
Security & Compliance :
- Implement TLS/mTLS, encryption at rest, and RBAC/permission models.
- Ensure continuous compliance with enterprise audit frameworks (e.g., ICIF, CSLO).
- Maintain secure configuration baselines and monitor for deviations or vulnerabilities.
Upgrades & Maintenance :
- Lead upgrades and patching for Elasticsearch, Kibana, Logstash, and supporting components.
- Remediate CVEs with minimal downtime using rolling upgrades or blue/green patterns.
- Maintain cluster health and stability through routine maintenance tasks.
Data Pipeline Management :
- Configure and optimize Logstash pipelines, Beats ingestion, and enrichment processors.
- Integrate ELK with Kafka for scalable and resilient data ingestion.
- Troubleshoot ingestion delays, mapping conflicts, or pipeline bottlenecks.
Monitoring & Troubleshooting :
- Build and manage Kibana dashboards, alerts, and visualizations for operational visibility.
- Diagnose and resolve slow queries, cluster instability, failed ingestion pipelines, and shard imbalance issues.
- Implement proactive alerting for node health, disk usage, heap pressure, and indexing failures.
Required Skills & Experience :
- 8 - 11 years of experience with ELK Stack architecture, operations, and tuning.
- Strong in Elasticsearch internals: shards, replicas, clusters, ILM, node roles, and performance tuning.
- Hands-on with Logstash, Beats, Kibana visualization, and alerting.
- Experience integrating ELK with Kafka, including offset management and delivery guarantees.
- Solid understanding of TLS/mTLS, RBAC, encryption, and enterprise security standards.
- Expertise in troubleshooting distributed systems and query performance.
Skills
DevOps, ElasticSearch, Logstash, Kibana, Distributed Systems, ELK Stack, Data Ingestion, Log Management Tools, Observability Services