Principal Engineer, Confluent

• Deep Expertise: A proven track record of leading the architecture and delivery of large-scale distributed storage systems with company-level impact
• Distributed Systems Mastery: Comprehensive knowledge of fault tolerance, consistency, scalability, and cloud-native platforms
• Strategic Influence: Ability to navigate extreme ambiguity, reduce systemic complexity, and anticipate industry trends to design systems for the next 3–5 years
• Leadership Presence: Strong ability to influence executives and stakeholders while fostering a collaborative environment across multiple teams
• Execution: Demonstrated ability to move from high-level vision to detailed technical implementation and delivery

Desirable

• As a Principal Engineer, you will be a key technical leader shaping the long-term architecture, scalability, and reliability of the Tableflow project and the broader Confluent platform
• You will focus on advancing key layers of Tableflow, including its multi-tenant, highly available compute infrastructure and core components responsible for table materialization and background maintenance
• You will own company-level technical domains, set direction for critical initiatives, and influence both engineering practices and product strategy
• This role requires operating with autonomy in highly ambiguous spaces, making decisions that balance technical depth with business impact to ensure high availability and scalability for background storage tasks across all of Confluent Cloud
• Technical Strategy & Leadership: Define and drive company-level technical strategy for critical systems, ensuring long-term innovation for Tableflow’s storage and metadata engines
• Metadata Architecture & Lifecycle Management: Architect and evolve a high-performance, metadata management system that supports low latency updates and efficient query planning
• Storage Engine Innovation: Design and implement innovative strategies for table schematization, materialization, and compaction at a massive scale
• Platform Engineering: Build and maintain multi-tenant, highly available infrastructure for background computational tasks, ensuring the platform is optimized for scalability, reliability, and resilience
• Architectural Excellence: Establish and evangelize engineering standards, architectural patterns, and technical frameworks adopted across the organization
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with executives, product management, and engineering leaders to align technical vision with business objectives
• Mentorship & Culture: Mentor senior and staff-level engineers, growing future technical leaders and shaping a culture of engineering excellence and open-source contribution
• Open-Source & External Representation: Lead contributions to relevant open-source projects like Apache Iceberg and represent Confluent externally through technical talks and thought leadership