Staff Software Engineer, Cloud Data Storage

Temporal; Seattle (WA); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Temporal is seeking a Staff Engineer to design, build, and maintain core backend data store components for Temporal Cloud, including the Write Ahead Log, metadata stores, multi-level caches, and tiered storage.

You will own reliability and performance, own SLOs, lead incident reviews, mentor engineers, and drive RFCs while partnering with Server, Cloud, and DX teams to ship features end-to-end, impacting planet-scale data durability for workflows.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience as an Arranger and/or Builder of highly scalable distributed systems.
• Solid computer science fundamentals in distributed systems concepts including multi-threading and concurrency.
• Experience writing concurrent code in production with languages like Go or Java.
• Experience building and running services on AWS; bonus: Azure and Google Cloud.
• Experience with ElasticSearch and/or ClickHouse.

Responsibilities

• Design & build distributed data systems – APIs, schemas, replication paths, durable storage for petabytes of workflow history.
• Drive reliability & performance – own SLOs, chaos-testing, profiling hot paths, incident reviews.

Skills

Distributed systems

Concurrency

Go / Java

AWS experience

ElasticSearch / ClickHouse

Tools

Kubernetes

CRDs

Job description

Role Summary

Cloud Data Store (CDS) owns the storage, retrieval, and lifecycle of all workflow data at planet scale. We design the persistence APIs, build storage abstractions that run across cloud vendors, and deliver the observability that lets customers trust their state machines for years.

As a Staff Engineer, you will get the chance to design, build, and maintain significant portions of our backend functionality for highly scalable, multi-tenant services. You’ll own the custom persistence stack for Temporal Cloud which includes a Write Ahead Log, various metadata stores (Cassandra, etcd), multi-level caches, tiered storage etc.

What You’ll Do

• Design & build distributed data systems – craft APIs, schemas, and replication paths that keep petabytes of workflow history durable and query-able. Clearly document design choices and operational knowledge to successfully deploy and run service with those features.

• Drive reliability & performance – own SLOs, create chaos-test plans, profile hot paths, and lead incident reviews.

• Technical leadership – break down roadmap epics, mentor mid-level engineers, steward design docs through RFC.

• Cross-team collaboration – partner with the Server, Cloud, and DX teams to land features end-to-end.

What You’ll Bring

• 5 or more years of experience as an "Arranger" and/or "Builder/Enhancer" of highly scalable distributed systems.

• Solid computer science fundamentals in distributed systems concepts including multi-threading and concurrency.

• Experience writing concurrent code in production with languages like Go or Java or other applicable languages with skill level as "high end of Intermediate" and/or "Advanced" or "Expert" levels.

• Experience building and running services on AWS. Bonus: Microsoft Azure and Google GCP experience.

• Experience with Elastic Search and/or Clickhouse

Nice to Have

• Prior contributions to Temporal, Cadence, or other workflow engines.

• Deep expertise in a storage domain (LSM trees, columnar stores, transactional logs, etc.).

• Operated multi-region, ≥99.99 % uptime services.

• Experience working with Open Source Systems.

• Experience in building K8s controllers and/or CRDs is a plus

Temporal Technologies is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Temporal Technologies does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need. We embrace and celebrate differences and diversity.

Temporal is committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. If you need to request a reasonable accommodation, please let your Recruiter know so we can assist.