Staff Engineer – PaaS Messaging/Kafka (Remote)

GEICO; Atlanta (GA); Remote; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a Staff Engineer to join their innovative PaaS Messaging team. This role focuses on building high-performance, low-maintenance platforms that drive the transformation of the insurance business. You will collaborate with distinguished engineers to innovate and improve systems, ensuring quality and performance. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in open-source messaging and event streaming, particularly with Kafka and Pulsar. If you're passionate about engineering excellence and continuous improvement, this opportunity is perfect for you.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional experience in system design and data pipelines.
• Proficiency in at least one OOP language such as Java, Go, or Python.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and collaborate with teams to solve complex problems.
• Develop and execute a technical strategy for the Platform Engineering domain.

Skills

Open-source messaging

Event streaming

Kafka

Pulsar

ActiveMQ

Java

Go

Python

C++

CI/CD pipelines

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science

Tools

GIT

Jenkins

CircleCI

SonarQube

Terraform

Ansible

Grafana

Prometheus

Job description

GEICO is seeking an experienced Staff Engineer to join our PaaS Messaging team that focuses on building high-performance, low-maintenance, zero-downtime platforms and applications. You will help drive our insurance business transformation as we shift from a traditional IT model to a technology organization committed to engineering excellence, fostering a culture of psychological safety and continuous improvement.

You will collaborate with Distinguished and Senior Engineers to innovate, build new systems, improve existing ones, and identify new opportunities to apply your expertise to solve critical problems. You will lead the strategy and execution of a technical roadmap to increase product delivery velocity and unlock new engineering capabilities. The ideal candidate has deep expertise in open-source messaging and event streaming, with proven experience in Kafka, Pulsar, and/or ActiveMQ.

As a Staff Engineer, you will:

• Provide technical thought leadership across multiple areas of the enterprise
• Collaborate with product managers, team members, customers, and other engineering teams to solve complex problems
• Develop and execute a technical strategy for the Platform Engineering domain
• Ensure the quality, usability, and performance of solutions
• Mentor and role-model, enhancing the technical expertise of our engineering and product teams, and influence leadership
• Share best practices and improve processes across teams
• Analyze costs, forecast, and incorporate them into business planning
• Support resource planning, evaluate operational processes, measure outcomes, and promote continuous learning
• Participate in on-call and operational support

Qualifications:

• Extensive experience in complex system design, data pipelines, architectures, and scalable distributed systems
• Proficiency in at least one OOP language such as Java, Go, Python, or C++
• Deep knowledge of open-source messaging and event streaming platforms like Kafka, Pulsar, ActiveMQ, or RabbitMQ, including concepts like Topic Scaling, Partitions, and Consumer Groups
• Experience building Kafka Connectors or similar tooling
• Proven ability to influence engineering direction and product roadmaps through experimentation and design
• Experience transitioning research into production environments
• Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and related tools (e.g., GIT, Jenkins, CircleCI, SonarQube, Terraform, Ansible)
• Understanding of monitoring tools like Grafana and Prometheus is a plus
• Familiarity with messaging solutions like Azure Service Bus and Event Hub is a plus

Experience:

• 6+ years of professional experience
• 4+ years working with open-source frameworks
• 3+ years in architecture and design
• 3+ years with cloud services such as AWS, GCP, or Azure (preferred)

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent experience