Staff Engineer – PaaS Messaging/Kafka (Remote)

GEICO; Madison (WI); Remote; USD 105,000 - 230,000; 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 platforms and applications, driving the transformation of the insurance business into a tech-centric organization. The ideal candidate will possess deep technical expertise in open-source messaging and event streaming, with a strong background in Kafka, Pulsar, and ActiveMQ. You will collaborate with talented engineers to enhance system designs and improve product delivery velocity, while fostering a culture of continuous improvement and psychological safety. This is a unique opportunity to influence engineering direction and make a significant impact in a forward-thinking environment.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in complex system design and scalable distributed systems.
• Proficiency in at least one OOP language such as Java, Go, or Python.
• Experience with open-source messaging platforms and event streaming.

Responsibilities

• Lead the strategy and execution of a technical roadmap for product delivery.
• Collaborate with teams to solve complex problems and improve processes.
• Mentor and strengthen the technical expertise of engineering communities.

Skills

Open-source messaging platforms

Kafka

Pulsar

ActiveMQ

Java

Go

Python

C++

CI/CD

Cloud services (AWS, GCP, Azure)

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. This team 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 tech organization committed to engineering excellence, fostering a culture of psychological safety and continuous improvement.

In this role, you will collaborate with the Distinguished Engineer 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 technical expertise in open-source messaging and event streaming domains, with proven experience with Kafka, Pulsar, and/or ActiveMQ.

As a Staff Engineer, you will:

• Provide technical thought leadership across multiple areas in the enterprise
• Collaborate with product managers, team members, customers, and other engineering teams to solve complex problems
• Develop and execute technical strategies for the Platform Engineering domain
• Ensure the quality, usability, and performance of solutions
• Mentor and role-model, helping to strengthen the technical expertise of our engineering and product communities, and influence leadership
• Share best practices and improve processes within and across teams
• Analyze costs, forecast, and incorporate them into business plans
• Determine resource requirements, evaluate operational processes, measure outcomes, and support 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++
• Experience with open-source messaging and event streaming platforms like Kafka, Pulsar, ActiveMQ, or RabbitMQ, including understanding concepts like Topic Scaling, Partitions, and Consumer Groups
• Experience building Kafka Connectors or similar tooling
• Ability to influence engineering direction through design and experimentation
• Experience transitioning research into production environments
• Knowledge of CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and related tools (e.g., GIT, Jenkins, CircleCI, SonarQube, Terraform, Ansible)
• Deep understanding of CS data structures and algorithms
• Strong analytical problem-solving skills using quantitative methods
• Familiarity with developer tooling across the software development lifecycle
• Experience with enterprise-scale open-source messaging platforms
• Knowledge of monitoring tools like Grafana and Prometheus is a plus
• Familiarity with cloud services like AWS, GCP, or Azure is preferred

Experience:

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

Education:

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

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Salary Range: $105,000 - $230,000 annually. Final salary depends on experience, education, location, and market factors.

GEICO considers sponsoring qualified applicants for employment authorization.