Staff Software Engineer I - Confluent

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We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to work on various features and improvements in the Apache Kafka software. In this role, you will work closely with the Apache community as well as senior engineers on the team to build features, work on Kafka improvements and help review designs.. The features you build will cut across various components in the Kafka software stack including the Clients, Streams, Broker and other backend services. You will contribute to the performance improvements, operational aspects and innovate the stack.

What You Will Do:

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will be a technical leader whose work significantly impacts the product, engineering organization, and customer success.

• Collaborate with the Apache Kafka community via KIPs, code contributions, reviews, and technical discussions; represent Confluent’s interests while keeping the broader ecosystem in mind.
• Drive projects that have high complexity requiring technical acumen, a high level of judgement and able to deal with ambiguity.
• Be a force multiplier and show strong ability to mentor and grow the team with guidance on strong design principles and software architecture.
• Insist on high standards for the quality of software the team is developing.
• Communicate with product management and engineering leaders on the roadmap, understand the specs and the product interfaces.
• Drive operational excellence on reliability improvements, operational events and supportability
• Demonstrate strong verbal and written communication skills to influence teams/peers beyond immediate span of control.

Experience:

• Track record of delivering complex systems projects with large scope (multi quarter design and development) leading a team of engineers, setting direction for projects, working with stakeholders, adept at using AI tools for coding and working backwards from the customers.
• 4+ years driving staff-level or equivalent technical initiatives across multiple teams or components.
• Experience with Rust programming language.

Leadership & Influence:

• Demonstrated ability to lead through ambiguity, set direction, and align multiple teams around complex technical plans.
• Track record of mentoring senior engineers and enabling others to deliver on high-risk, high-impact projects.
• Clear, concise technical communication, both written (design docs, KIPs) and verbal (reviews, cross-team forums).

• Prior experience as a committer/PMC or core maintainer on Apache Kafka or a similar project.