Remote Principal Engineer, Data Governance & Streaming

Confluent; Providence (RI); Remote; USD 285,000 - 342,000; Full time

Job summary

Confluent, a leader in data streaming, is seeking a Principal Engineer to own the schema governance and metadata platforms across Confluent Cloud and Confluent Platform. You will shape long‑term architecture, drive reliability at scale, and mentor senior engineers.

You will work with cross‑functional leaders to align technical direction with business goals, operate with autonomy in ambiguous spaces, and contribute to open‑source projects while representing the company externally.

Qualifications

• Proven track record delivering large-scale distributed systems.
• Experience shaping platform-level governance and metadata infrastructure.
• Ability to influence executives and stakeholders.
• Strong problem solving in ambiguous environments.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive company-level technical strategy for governance systems.
• Architect metadata management with low-latency lookups and strong consistency.
• Design data protection capabilities including encryption and access control.
• Build highly available, multi-tenant infrastructure.
• Establish engineering standards and architectural patterns.
• Collaborate across platform teams to align vision with business goals.
• Mentor senior engineers and contribute to open-source projects.

Skills

Distributed Systems Leadership

Cloud-Native Platforms

Engineering Leadership

Open-Source Contribution

Architectural Strategy

Tools

AWS

GCP

Kubernetes

Job description

Confluent, a leader in data streaming, is seeking a Principal Engineer to own the schema governance and metadata platforms across Confluent Cloud and Confluent Platform. You will shape long‑term architecture, drive reliability at scale, and mentor senior engineers.

You will work with cross‑functional leaders to align technical direction with business goals, operate with autonomy in ambiguous spaces, and contribute to open‑source projects while representing the company externally.