Principal Engineer - Schema & Metadata Governance

Confluent; Harrisburg (Dauphin County); Remote; USD 285,000 - 342,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Bonus

Job summary

Confluent is seeking a Principal Engineer to shape the long-term architecture for the Schema Registry and governance systems within its Data Streaming Platform. The role focuses on scalable, reliable governance across Confluent Cloud and Platform.

You will lead with autonomy in ambiguous spaces, partnering with executives and engineers to deliver shared architectural decisions, while mentoring staff engineers and contributing to open-source community efforts.

Qualifications

• Proven track record of leading architecture and delivery of large-scale distributed systems.
• Deep knowledge of fault tolerance, consistency, and cloud-native platforms.
• Experience with streaming or event-driven architectures and metadata/governance systems.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and design for the next 3–5 years.
• Strong leadership and ability to influence executives and stakeholders.
• Delivery-focused with bias toward shipped outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive company-level technical strategy for governance systems.
• Architect high-performance metadata management supporting low-latency lookups and strong consistency.
• Design data protection capabilities including encryption and access control.
• Build and maintain multi-tenant infrastructure for governance services.
• Set architecture direction and evangelize engineering standards.
• Collaborate with executives and product management to align vision across teams.
• Mentor senior engineers and contribute to open-source initiatives.
• Represent Confluent externally through talks and thought leadership.

Skills

Technical strategy

Distributed systems

Streaming architectures

Strategic influence

Leadership presence

Execution / delivery

Job description

Confluent is seeking a Principal Engineer to shape the long-term architecture for the Schema Registry and governance systems within its Data Streaming Platform. The role focuses on scalable, reliable governance across Confluent Cloud and Platform.

You will lead with autonomy in ambiguous spaces, partnering with executives and engineers to deliver shared architectural decisions, while mentoring staff engineers and contributing to open-source community efforts.