Senior Principal Engineer, Governance & Metadata

Confluent; Boston (MA); 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 of its Data Streaming Platform, with a focus on governance, schema management, and metadata consistency. You will own company-level domains, drive scalable infrastructure, and influence cross-team technical decisions.

You will lead with autonomy in ambiguous spaces, balancing technical depth with business impact to ensure reliability and growth across Confluent Cloud and Confluent Platform. Equity and bonus are offered.

Qualifications

• Proven track record of leading architecture and delivery of large-scale distributed systems with company-level impact.
• Comprehensive knowledge of fault tolerance, consistency, and scalability in cloud-native environments.
• Experience with streaming or event-driven architectures and related governance domains.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, influence executives, and design for the next 3–5 years.

Responsibilities

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

Skills

Distributed systems

Cloud-native platforms

Streaming architecture

Strategic influence

Leadership presence

Execution

Job description

Confluent is seeking a Principal Engineer to shape the long-term architecture of its Data Streaming Platform, with a focus on governance, schema management, and metadata consistency. You will own company-level domains, drive scalable infrastructure, and influence cross-team technical decisions.

You will lead with autonomy in ambiguous spaces, balancing technical depth with business impact to ensure reliability and growth across Confluent Cloud and Confluent Platform. Equity and bonus are offered.