Principal Data Streaming Architect — Remote

Confluent; Lincoln (NE); Remote; USD 285,000 - 342,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Bonus

Job summary

Confluent's Data Streaming Platform seeks a Principal Engineer to shape the long-term architecture of schema and metadata governance systems across the platform. You will own company-level technical domains, set direction for critical initiatives, and influence engineering practices and product strategy with autonomy.

You will lead high‑impact efforts on multi‑tenant infrastructure, low-latency metadata lookups, and policy enforcement at scale, collaborating with executives, product teams and

Qualifications

• Proven track record leading the architecture and delivery of large-scale distributed systems.
• Deep knowledge of fault tolerance, consistency, and cloud-native platforms.
• Experience with streaming architectures and metadata/governance.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and influence engineering decisions.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive company-level technical strategy for governance systems.
• Architect metadata management and lifecycle capabilities with low-latency lookups and strong consistency.
• Design and evolve data protection capabilities across the platform.
• Build highly available, multi-tenant infrastructure for governance services.
• Establish engineering standards and architectural patterns across the organization.
• Collaborate with executives and product leaders to align technical vision with business goals.
• Mentor senior engineers and contribute to open-source initiatives.

Skills

Distributed systems

Fault tolerance

Cloud-native

Streaming architecture

Strategic influence

Leadership

Execution

Job description

Confluent's Data Streaming Platform seeks a Principal Engineer to shape the long-term architecture of schema and metadata governance systems across the platform. You will own company-level technical domains, set direction for critical initiatives, and influence engineering practices and product strategy with autonomy.

You will lead high‑impact efforts on multi‑tenant infrastructure, low-latency metadata lookups, and policy enforcement at scale, collaborating with executives, product teams and