Responsibilities
- Own the internal Kafka distribution, including branch management, patch curation, release cutting, and upgrade planning
- Contribute upstream bug fixes, KIPs, code reviews, and design discussions to Apache Kafka
- Diagnose and fix broker and controller issues involving replication, partition reassignment, KRaft consensus, log storage, ISR management, and protocol handling
- Develop custom production patches for performance tuning, observability hooks, and operational safety valves
- Establish Kafka development practices for testing, benchmarking, and patch validation before rollout
- Mentor a supporting engineer and grow the team’s Kafka capabilities
- Serve as the internal authority on Kafka internals and advise platform teams on configuration, capacity planning, and architecture
- Interface with audit and compliance teams to ensure the Kafka distribution meets compliance and regulatory standards
Requirements
- Deep experience reading, modifying, and debugging Apache Kafka broker, controller, or client internals
- A track record of upstream Apache Kafka contributions, such as committed patches, KIP discussions, pull request reviews, or equivalent community engagement
- Strong distributed-systems fundamentals, including consensus, replication, exactly-once semantics, log-structured storage, and distributed state machines
- Systems-level programming knowledge covering JVM internals, garbage collection tuning, memory layout, JIT behavior, OS-level I/O, page cache, fsync semantics, zero-copy, TCP tuning, and socket buffers
- Experience maintaining a software fork or distribution while managing local patches and upstream mergeability
- At least 8 years of systems or infrastructure software engineering experience, with meaningful experience in Kafka or comparable distributed systems
- Apache Kafka committer or PMC member experience is preferred
- Experience with KRaft, Kafka Streams internals, Kafka Connect internals, Kafka test infrastructure, system tests, Trogdor, or ducktape is preferred
- Experience authoring or co-authoring a KIP is preferred
Benefits
- Medical, critical illness, accidental, and life insurance
- Employee assistance program, onsite medical center, and emergency support system
- Maternity, paternity, adoption assistance, and day-care support programs
- Relocation, transfer support, and travel policies
- Employee and flexible PF contributions, gratuity, NPS, and leave encashment
- Higher education assistance, car lease, and salary advance policy
Tech Stack
Categories
About PhonePe
At PhonePe, we are building the future of digital finance in India. Trusted by over 700M users and 50M+ merchants across the country, we are creating technology that empowers people and businesses to manage their money with ease. Our mission: Make financial services accessible, simple and secure for every Indian. From UPI payments to business and personal loans, insurance and wealth management to merchant solutions, we are building a diverse digital ecosystem that helps people send, spend, manage and grow their money with confidence. With products like Share.Market, our stock broking platform, and Indus Appstore, India’s first localised app marketplace, we continue to expand our ecosystem and empower consumers and businesses with more ways to access digital services. At our core, we are a team of innovators, problem-solvers and builders working at the intersection of technology, finance and impact. Our people are driven by the opportunity to solve complex challenges at scale, create inclusive digital solutions and shape the way India transacts. Our culture of ownership, collaboration and continuous learning enables teams to build products that redefine everyday financial experiences.