9 days ago
Base Salary
$220k - $265k/yr
Responsibilities
- Lead Apache Kafka upstream initiatives across KIP authoring, design consensus, implementation, review, and release.
- Provide binding committer reviews for Kafka patches and community contributions.
- Support Kafka release planning, blocker triage, test stabilization, release candidate validation, documentation readiness, and post-release follow-through.
- Translate enterprise customer and operator needs into upstream proposals and KIP-level designs.
- Influence Kafka architecture, compatibility, protocol evolution, release policy, contribution standards, and roadmap decisions.
- Mentor engineers and contributors toward reviewer or committer standing.
- Improve Kafka CI reliability, test coverage, contributor tooling, benchmarking, release automation, and compatibility validation.
- Advise product and field teams on complex Kafka technical trade-offs.
Requirements
- At least 12 years of applicable professional software engineering experience.
- Current Apache Kafka committer status with a sustained, publicly verifiable record of patches, reviews, KIPs, and community participation.
- Expert Java engineering capability in performance-sensitive, concurrent, production-grade distributed systems.
- Deep Apache Kafka internals expertise in at least one major domain, such as broker storage, log replication, KRaft, metadata management, consumer group coordination, protocol compatibility, Kafka Streams, Kafka Connect, observability, performance, release management, or CI.
- Experience leading complex technical work through the Apache open source governance model, including KIP authoring or co-sponsorship, design consensus, mailing-list engagement, and Jira-driven delivery.
- Strong written communication for asynchronous global technical collaboration through mailing lists, design documents, code reviews, and Jira threads.
- Senior-level technical judgment, independent problem solving, and the ability to address novel or ambiguous assignments.
- Preferred: PMC membership in Apache Kafka or a related Apache project.
- Preferred: experience with current Kafka feature and maintenance areas, enterprise customer outcomes, contributor mentoring, and the Kafka ecosystem.
Benefits
- Comprehensive benefits package that may include health insurance, life insurance, retirement or pension plans, paid time off, leave options, performance-based incentives, employee stock purchase plans, and restricted stock units, subject to regional variation.
- US office locations include San Jose, Raleigh, Boston, and Seattle; the role requires three days per week in the office.
- Globally distributed team with up to 10% travel.
- Additional global opportunities may be available in Cork, Ireland, and Schiphol, Netherlands.
- Benefits and offerings vary by country and region and are governed by local laws, regulations, and company policies.
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