Staff Software Engineer, Compute (Temporal Cloud)

Temporal; United States; On-site; USD 170,000 - 278,000; Full time

Job summary

Temporal is seeking a senior compute-focused engineer to advance durable execution for AI and enterprise workloads. You will architect and operate hot-path services in Temporal Cloud, building cross-provider compute primitives with strong emphasis on reliability and observability.

You will own autoscaling, IAM boundaries, secure credential handling, and multi-tenant safety while promoting operability through SLOs, tracing, and incident response. Strong communication and Go experience are valued.

Qualifications

• Experience building distributed systems and multi-tenant platforms.
• Strong fundamentals in concurrency, performance, reliability, and failure-mode thinking.
• Track record shipping platform primitives used by engineers and customers (APIs, control/data planes).
• Own outcomes: SLOs, incident response, and on-call quality improvements.
• Excellent written communication; Go experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Invent: create managed compute primitives for Temporal Cloud with clean APIs and cross-provider support.
• Own: architect and operate hot-path services where performance and correctness matter.
• Deliver: real-world cloud integrations including IAM boundaries and secure credentials.
• Make operability a feature with SLOs, tracing, metrics, and robust failure testing.
• Ship end-to-end: API design, rollout strategy, backwards compatibility, long-term maintenance.
• Teach: raise the bar through design reviews, docs, and cross-team leadership.

Skills

Distributed systems

Multi-tenant

Concurrency

Performance

Reliability

Failure modes

SLOs & incidents

On-call processes

APIs

Control plane

Data plane

Kubernetes controllers

Job description

Role Summary

Temporal powers durable execution for the world’s most demanding AI and enterprise systems. The Compute team at Temporal makes that durability feel effortless by building the managed compute primitives that run workers and other execution systems across Temporal Cloud.

Role Summary

Temporal powers durable execution for the world’s most demanding AI and enterprise systems. The Compute team at Temporal makes that durability feel effortless by building the managed compute primitives that run workers and other execution systems across Temporal Cloud.

See the "Compute team" link to read more -->

Compute team

We’re solving a hard platform problem: make compute transparent, elastic, safe-by-default, observable, and multi-cloud - without turning customers into infrastructure operators. We build platform primitives that span a variety of execution environments (e.g., serverless-style runtimes, containerized fleets, and customer-controlled deployments). Our work sits at the intersection of control plane + data plane: scaling decisions, isolation boundaries, multi-tenant safety, and production-grade observability. If you’ve built autoscaling systems, multi-tenant platforms, or cloud infrastructure, you’ll find a lot to love here.

What You’ll Do

Invent

• Create new managed compute primitives that feel first-class in Temporal Cloud: crisp abstractions, clean APIs, and an extension story across compute providers.
• Design self-optimizing autoscaling systems (signals, backstops, debouncing, guardrails) that scale worker fleets safely and predictably.
• Define the Open Source Server Cloud boundary for compute capabilities, keeping the architecture cohesive and maintainable.

Own

• Architect, build, and operate services on the hot path of task execution where performance and correctness are customer-visible.
• Deliver real-world cloud integrations (e.g., customer-account execution): IAM boundaries, secure credentials handling, networking constraints, quotas, and failure modes.
• Make operability a feature: SLOs, tracing/metrics, load and failure testing, incident reviews, and continuous hardening.
• Ship end-to-end: API design, rollout strategy, backwards compatibility, and long-term maintenance.

Teach

• Raise the bar through design docs, strong reviews, pragmatic technical leadership, and mentorship.
• Lead through influence across teams (Server, SDKs, Security, Control Plane) to land coherent platform changes.

What You’ll Bring

• Significant experience building distributed systems or multi-tenant platform services (design, implementation, and production operations).
• Strong systems fundamentals: concurrency, performance, reliability, and failure-mode thinking.
• A record of shipping platform primitives used by other engineers/customers (APIs, control planes, data planes).
• Comfort owning outcomes: SLOs, incident response, and improving on-call quality over time.
• Excellent written communication and crisp tradeoff thinking. (Go experience is a plus; judgment matters most.)

Nice to Have

• Experience building cloud infrastructure platforms.
• Experience with IAM/security boundaries for cross-account execution models.
• Having built Kubernetes controllers / CRDs or heterogeneous worker fleet operations.

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.

Compensation Range: $169,600 - $278,250