Senior Open Source Kafka Engineer — Upstream Leader

NetApp; Waltham (MA); Hybrid; USD 220,000 - 265,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

Life Insurance

Pension Plan

Paid Time Off

Performance-Based Incentives

Employee Stock Purchase Plan

RSUs

Job summary

NetApp is seeking a Senior Open Source Software Engineer to lead upstream Apache Kafka initiatives and collaborate across product and field teams. You will drive design, review, and release processes, while shaping roadmap through committer governance and cross-functional leadership.

The role blends hands-on Java development with strategic influence on Kafka internals, streams, and Connect, with up to 10% travel and a global, distributed team dynamic.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Public upstream Apache Kafka track record with committer status (patches, reviews, KIPs).
• Expert Java engineering for production-grade distributed systems.
• Deep knowledge of Kafka internals in at least one major domain.
• Proven ability to lead complex open-source work within Apache governance.
• Strong written communication for global collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Lead upstream initiatives in Apache Kafka from design to release.
• Provide binding committer reviews on upstream patches and community contributions.
• Contribute to Kafka release management and governance.
• Translate enterprise needs into upstream proposals and sustained engagement.
• Shape community direction and influence project decisions and roadmaps.
• Mentor engineers toward committer standing and raise contribution quality.
• Improve upstream infrastructure, CI reliability, and tooling.

Skills

Java engineering

Kafka committer

Distributed systems

Leadership

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering or related field

Tools

Kafka Streams

Apache Kafka tooling

CI/CD tooling

Job description

NetApp is seeking a Senior Open Source Software Engineer to lead upstream Apache Kafka initiatives and collaborate across product and field teams. You will drive design, review, and release processes, while shaping roadmap through committer governance and cross-functional leadership.

The role blends hands-on Java development with strategic influence on Kafka internals, streams, and Connect, with up to 10% travel and a global, distributed team dynamic.