Staff Software Engineer: Real-Time AI on Streaming Data

Confluent Inc; Mountain View, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Confluent Inc. in Mountain View, CA, is seeking an engineering leader to design, build, and operate distributed backend services for AI on streaming data. You will own features end to end, make cross-team architectural decisions, and ensure reliability of production systems while mentoring colleagues.

This role requires deep expertise in Kubernetes, Go/Java/Python, and strong communication to align teams across the platform.

Qualifications

• 10+ years designing, building, and operating distributed systems in production.
• Strong Kubernetes knowledge and cloud-native patterns.
• Proficiency in Go, Java, or Python and willingness to use all three.
• Excellent written and verbal communication for cross-team collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Design and build backend services that run AI and model inference on real-time data.
• Own features end to end, from design to deployment and iteration.
• Make architectural decisions across services spanning multiple teams.
• Ensure reliability, test coverage, and operability in production.
• Participate in on-call for services owned by the team.

Skills

Kubernetes

Distributed systems

Containerization

Networking

Go/Java/Python

Cross-team leadership

Communication

Tools

CI/CD

Cloud platforms

Microservices

Job description

Confluent Inc. in Mountain View, CA, is seeking an engineering leader to design, build, and operate distributed backend services for AI on streaming data. You will own features end to end, make cross-team architectural decisions, and ensure reliability of production systems while mentoring colleagues.

This role requires deep expertise in Kubernetes, Go/Java/Python, and strong communication to align teams across the platform.