Principal Engineer - Compute Platform

We’re not just building better tech. We’re rewriting how data moves and what the world can do with it. With Confluent, data doesn’t sit still. Our platform puts information in motion, streaming in near real-time so companies can react faster, build smarter, and deliver experiences as dynamic as the world around them.

It takes a certain kind of person to join this team. Those who ask hard questions, give honest feedback, and show up for each other. No egos, no solo acts. Just smart, curious humans pushing toward something bigger, together.

One Confluent. One Team. One Data Streaming Platform.

As Principal Engineer of the new Compute Platform, you will be working closely with the team and other key stakeholders to design, architect and build out our secure, multi-tenant, polyglot, Cloud-native Compute substrate to enable new business opportunities across Confluent Cloud (including Kafka, Flink, Connect and more) . As a senior technical leader, you think strategically and you help drive end-to-end technical delivery from customer experience to scaling internal operations. You are not confined to the status quo and you leverage your expertise in Cloud-native, large-scale distributed systems to help take our platform to the next level. You worry about key operational aspects (availability, reliability, performance, monitoring, emergency response, capacity planning, disaster recovery) of our new Compute Platform, and you make sure that we have a highly-available, resilient and secure offering that our largest customers can rely on. If you love the hum of big data systems, thinking about how to make them run as smoothly as possible, and want to have a big influence on the architecture plus operational design points of this new product, then you will fit right in.

• Be part of driving the overall technical charter for the new Compute Platform -- including, but not limited to cloud infrastructure, big data systems, and security

• Work closely with product management and engineering management to build and drive the overall roadmap for Confluent’s Compute Platform to enable new business opportunities

• Deliver high impact to the business by driving important technical initiatives in areas comprising (but not limited to) security, reliability, multi-tenancy, architectural direction, and major component refactor across organizational boundaries

• Be as a strong technical leader and representative for engineering across the Compute organization

• Lead the team and the product on aspects of product definition, architectural design, and delivery

• 12+ years of experience in delivering scalable software solutions

• Proven track record of leading the delivery of large-scale, highly available, low latency, high quality systems

• Deep hands-on technical expertise in hyper-scale distributed systems engineering

• Deep expertise in multi-cluster / multi-tenant Kubernetes a big plus

• Expertise in Language Runtimes / VMs (JVM, WASM, CPython, etc.) a big plus

• Expertise in Container & Virtualization/Hypervisor technologies (firecracker/gVisor/ cloud-hypervisor/kata-containers, etc)

• Experience in large-scale safe deployment technologies & best practices

• Experience in Cloud Native technologies including networking & security

• Experience in driving operational excellence for large, production services

• Track record of providing technical leadership and mentorship

• Track record of working collaboratively across teams and roles, including but not limited to product management, UX, and other engineering teams and leaders

Belonging isn’t a perk here. It’s the baseline. We work across time zones and backgrounds, knowing the best ideas come from different perspectives. And we make space for everyone to lead, grow, and challenge what’s possible.

We’re proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. Employment decisions are based on job-related criteria, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other classification protected by law.