Staff Engineer – PaaS Messaging/Kafka (Remote)

GEICO; Philadelphia (Philadelphia County); Remote; USD 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is on the lookout for a Staff Engineer to join their PaaS Messaging team. This role offers an exciting opportunity to drive engineering excellence and transform the insurance business through innovative technology. You will collaborate with talented engineers to build high-performance platforms, influence technical direction, and mentor your peers. If you have a passion for open-source messaging systems and a strong background in scalable architectures, this is your chance to make a significant impact in a forward-thinking organization committed to continuous improvement and psychological safety.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in system design and data pipelines.
• Proficiency in OOP languages like Java, Go, or Python.
• Deep knowledge of open-source messaging platforms.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical strategy and execution for the Platform Engineering domain.
• Collaborate with teams to solve complex problems and improve processes.
• Mentor engineers and share best practices across teams.

Skills

Open-source messaging expertise

Kafka

Pulsar

ActiveMQ

Java

Python

C++

Data pipelines

Scalable distributed architectures

CI/CD pipelines

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science

Tools

Kafka Connectors

Grafana

Prometheus

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

GEICO is seeking an experienced Staff Engineer to join our PaaS Messaging team, focused 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.

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 expertise in open-source messaging and event streaming, with proven experience in Kafka, Pulsar, and/or ActiveMQ.

As a Staff Engineer, your responsibilities include:

• Providing technical thought leadership across multiple areas
• Collaborating with product managers, team members, customers, and other engineering teams to solve complex problems
• Developing and executing technical strategies for the Platform Engineering domain
• Ensuring the quality, usability, and performance of solutions
• Mentoring and coaching engineers and influencing leadership
• Sharing best practices and improving processes across teams
• Analyzing costs, forecasting, and incorporating them into business plans
• Supporting resource planning, evaluating operational processes, and demonstrating adaptability
• Participating in on-call and operational support

Qualifications:

• Extensive experience in complex system design, data pipelines, and scalable distributed architectures
• Proficiency in at least one OOP language such as Java, Go, Python, or C++
• Deep understanding 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
• Ability to influence engineering direction through design and experimentation
• Experience partnering with teams to deploy research into production
• Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and related tools
• Strong understanding of CS data structures and algorithms
• Experience with analytical problem-solving using quantitative methods
• Familiarity with developer tooling throughout the SDLC and monitoring tools like Grafana and Prometheus is a plus
• Knowledge of cloud services such as 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