Staff Software Engineer I - Confluent

Confluent Platform

The Confluent Platform team is dedicated to delivering an industry-leading, enterprise-grade data streaming platform for any BYOI (Bring Your Own Infrastructure) environment—ranging from local developer setups to private cloud infrastructure.

CP Charter

To make rapid, data-driven decisions at scale, modern enterprises depend on real-time streaming infrastructure. Confluent stands as the leader in data-in-motion, powered by the Confluent Platform. Our mission is to extend this streaming platform and domain expertise to every environment and audience—from private cloud deployments to the broader open-source developer community.

• Deliver the "Confluent" Experience in Private Cloud: CP accounts for 45% of total Confluent revenue. We empower customers to maximize their private data center investments across all data-in-motion initiatives by offering an ambitious product roadmap, prompt security patches, and reliable support.

• Bridge Hybrid Environments: We build connected cloud capabilities that allow customers to seamlessly integrate Confluent Cloud innovations into their existing private cloud infrastructure.

• Expand Tech Community Engagement: We actively capture mindshare within the technical community through the reach and adoption of Confluent Platform.

• Elevate Developer Experience: We continuously refine and improve the end-to-end developer experience for Apache Kafka and Confluent products.

Confluent Platform Team:

CP Team is fully based out of India - started in 2023. CP team consists of the following sub teams

Hybrid Observability and Management Pillar:

This pillar addresses the Confluent Platform’s observability and management needs. The products support fully air-gapped enterprise deployments and provide centralized, Confluent Cloud-based monitoring and management across multiple environments.

• Confluent Control Center (C3) — C3 is a control plane for monitoring fully air-gapped Confluent Platform deployments. Designed for enterprise teams that provide Kafka as a service, it helps operators assess deployment health, configure cluster alerts and notifications, and maintain data-plane SLAs. It also supports security and access management, along with developer debugging and troubleshooting.

• Unified Stream Manager (USM) — A hybrid monitoring and management solution that enables Confluent Platform customers to use Confluent Cloud capabilities, including data governance, stream lineage, and cost-effective monitoring and management. It provides centralized monitoring for multiple edge deployments, creating a single control plane for stream products across cloud and self-hosted data centers.

About the role

You will serve as the lead Staff Engineer for the Hybrid Observability pillar.

The CP team’s charter has continued to expand since its inception. In this role, you will provide technical leadership across emerging priorities, including managing and monitoring large, geographically distributed CP clusters; strengthening security to address evolving global data-protection regulations; and improving tools and processes that help on-call engineers resolve customer issues within committed SLAs. Success requires navigating open-ended strategy, exploring and testing customer-focused ideas, and shaping solutions beyond a predefined list of requirements.

As a leading technologist in the Hybrid Observability pillar, you will apply deep expertise in Confluent Platform and Confluent Cloud to deliver hybrid observability capabilities to customers. You will design solutions, review architecture and code, and implement complex system components by yourself. You will also diagnose customer escalations, recommend mitigations, and work across the full Confluent Platform technology stack.

This role requires you to drive operational and engineering excellence, help shape the roadmap, and evolve the team’s vision and direction. You will collaborate across the organization to advance the roadmap and turn that vision into reality.

What You Will Do:

• Collaborate with engineers and architects to advance Confluent Platform’s hybrid observability products, C3 and USM.

• Partner with product management, engineering leadership, and key stakeholders across Confluent and Confluent Cloud to shape and drive the roadmap, while serving as a strong technical voice for CP across the company.

• ChampionC3/USM healthand operational excellence by influencing technical direction and reviewing code, designs, and proposed improvements.

• Architect and design hybrid USM solutions, applying strongexpertisein building andoperatingdistributed systems across cloud and on-premises environments.

• Mentor high-performing engineers and technical leads, helping them grow their skills through hands-on guidance and experience.