Elastic: Distributed by design

First and foremost, “distributed” is built right into the DNA of our products. Elasticsearch is a distributed, open source search and analytics engine. Elastic’s distributed architecture refers to the structural design that allows Elasticsearch to scale horizontally and maintain high availability. This architecture automatically distributes data across multiple nodes in a cluster, helping provide resilience against hardware failures and the ability to handle massive data sets. Being distributed means our products can scale quickly without a lot of disruption.

And this is where the idea for a distributed company got its start. If a search engine can be distributed, why can’t a company? And if a product can scale fast and adapt without unnecessary disruption, why can’t a company do the same?

Being open source gives us a certain kind of freedom and inclusivity in how we build our products. Distributed software doesn’t need to be developed by a distributed team, but starting in open source, we knew that no matter where an engineer, marketer, or salesperson might be located, they can still make important contributions to our project.

So, just like Elasticsearch itself, our Elasticians are also distributed around the world — working remotely, from one of our Elastic offices, or a mix of both.

Where you work depends on a variety of factors, including your role, your team, and your preferences. Some roles benefit from in-person collaboration, while others can be done more asynchronously.

An added benefit is that our global workforce brings a variety of perspectives, experiences, cultures, and ideas to Elastic. Like our Elasticians, our customers are all over the world, so it’s important that our products are built and shipped by people who reflect the diversity of the global customers who use them. 

“For us, distributed isn't just how our software is designed — it’s part of our foundation. And it's the exact reason our team operates the way we do,” says Shay Banon, chief technology officer at Elastic and founder of Elasticsearch. “You see, we’ve always believed that great ideas can come from anywhere. Staying true to that open mindset is how we keep innovating, building a better product and, ultimately, a better company.”

The distributed nature of our company began before we were, well … a company. With founders in Israel, Germany, and the Netherlands, early work on Elasticsearch — the core product of the Elastic Stack — was done in a distributed way.

When we filed to go public, we had customers located in over 80 countries, and our strategy was to continue to expand internationally. As of April 2026, we have employees in 42 countries.

We are not a small company anymore, so we’re constantly discussing how to grow and better communicate and collaborate within our teams. This means learning how to scale projects across regions while developing new features and refining the review processes that go along with them. As we’ve grown, we’ve had to scale the way we do work, but our distributed start allowed us to think differently about the way business could be done, and it allowed us to be more flexible to meet those challenges.

For example, with Elasticians on the same teams in wildly different locations, there can’t be one schedule to unify them all. Not at our size. So, this requires trusting our Elasticians to be self motivated, and giving them the resources to work asynchronously when needed. When one time doesn’t work for everyone, distributed tools, such as GitHhub, Slack, Zoom, and Google Meet, are all there to help with async collaboration.

Staying mindful that some teammates are ending their workday just as others are beginning theirs requires a shift from the traditional nine-to-five mindset, but it’s one that works for us.

For managers, communicating as we grow requires some creative thinking, and broadcast communication is often a great way to spread vision across the company. As we’ve expanded from the United States to the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, we’ve coordinated department-wide meetings that all regions can attend and sometimes presented key updates at two different times to better communicate roadmaps and give employees access to Elastic leadership through AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions. 

It’s all about keeping in mind that while we’re in different places, we all have the same goals, and everyone benefits when we all get the same information to help us move toward those goals.

Trust plays a big part in a distributed workforce. Someone in Washington may start early because they do their best work early in the morning, while their colleague in New York is trying to get their kids to school before jumping into their workday. Elastic managers are not interested in micromanaging because it’s within our distributed nature to assume good intentions, and let the work speak for itself.

To promote these ideas, we developed the Elastic Source Code as a kind of ethos, a guiding light, and an extension of our distributed mindset. Each component of the Source Code is focused on what it means to work at Elastic; each environment and life is different, and Elasticians who are free to come as they are and find the space and time to do their best work will always bring 100%.

Being distributed isn’t just a way of doing business; it’s a mindset — one that we believe best sets up our Elasticians and our products for success. A distributed Elastic makes for a diverse Elastic, which makes for a better Elastic.

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