Principal Engineer - Confluent

IBM; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 290,000; Full time

Job summary

Confluent in Boston is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead the technical vision, architecture, execution, and operations of Confluent Connectors, ensuring scalable and reliable data streaming across systems. As an IC leader, you will guide the Connect team, collaborate with product management and engineering leadership, and drive innovation to outpace competitors while delivering impact for customers.

We value questions, mentorship, and a culture of excellence as data streams move near

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with product management, engineering leadership, and stakeholders to evolve Confluent Connect and define the roadmap.
• Steer the long-term direction of Confluent Kafka connectors and drive team mission.
• Define the technical charter for Connect and create competitive advantages through innovation.
• Mentor engineers and leads, provide feedback and support personal development goals.
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement and prioritise high-impact initiatives.
• Lead engineering teams across regions, ensuring hiring, communication, and execution quality.
• Establish processes for quality and operational maturity of the team.

Job description

About the job

We're not just building better tech. We're rewriting how data moves and what the world can do with it. With Confluent, data doesn't sit still. Our platform puts information in motion, streaming in near real-time so companies can react faster, build smarter, and deliver experiences as dynamic as the world around them.

It takes a certain kind of person to join this team. Those who ask hard questions, give honest feedback, and show up for each other. No egos, no solo acts. Just smart, curious humans pushing toward something bigger, together.

One Confluent. One Team. One Data Streaming Platform.

About The Role

We are building Kafka Connect charter which is core for scalable and reliable streaming data between Apache Kafka® and other data systems. It makes it simple to quickly define connectors that move large data sets in and out of Kafka. Kafka Connect can ingest entire databases or collect metrics from all your application servers into Kafka topics, making the data available for stream processing with low latency. An export connector can deliver data from Kafka topics into secondary indexes like Elasticsearch, or into batch systems-such as Hadoop for offline analysis.

We are looking for a Principal Engineer to lead the technical vision, architecture, execution, and operations of core engineering teams that build Confluent's industry-leading Kafka Connectors.. As an IC leader of this product line, you will be responsible for guiding the world-class Connect team in driving innovation and outpacing competitors.

What You Will Do

• Work with a strong team of engineers to help evolve Confluent Connect. Work closely with product management, engineering leadership, and other key stakeholders across various teams in Confluent to build and drive the overall roadmap.
• Drive the long-term direction and strategy of Confluent Kafka connectors, while partnering with internal stakeholders to drive the team's mission forward
• Drive the technical charter for Connect, and create competitive advantages for Kafka connectors by driving innovation. Drive improvements in the Kafka connectors to make them more usable and powerful for customers, and make them easier to adopt and scale.
• Mentor a team of high-performing engineers and leads, helping them to continue in growing their skill set through hands-on experience and mentorship. Provide timely and productive feedback, encourage a growth mindset, and advise team members in setting and working toward personal development goals.
• Build a culture of continuous improvement and prioritise large and high-impact initiatives that will fundamentally change Kafka connectors.
• Be a strong technical leader and representative for engineering teams in India. Nurture a culture of excellence on the team through a focus on hiring, communication, execution, and work quality. Create and manage processes that enable the team to do its best work.
• Continue a strong growth trajectory by hiring top tier engineers, and establish quality standards, design principles, and operational maturity for the team