Staff Software Engineer

Staff Software Engineer – Kora Orchestration Join to apply for the Staff Software Engineer – Kora Orchestration role at Confluent. Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Seniority level: Mid‑Senior. Employment type: Full‑time. Job function: Engineering and Information Technology. We’re not just building better tech. We’re rewriting how data moves and what the world can do with it. With Confluent, data doesn’t sit still. Our platform puts information in motion, streaming in near real time so companies can react faster, build smarter, and deliver experiences as dynamic as the world around them. About the Role Our team manages the metadata that makes Kafka a reliable, fault‑tolerant, and high‑performance distributed streaming platform. This includes coordinating the election of leaders, monitoring broker availability, persisting and distributing metadata, coordinating cluster‑wide actions, and more. You will work on building a highly available, reliable, secure, scalable, and multi‑tenant metadata layer, driving technical solutions end‑to‑end, and collaborating with stakeholders to design, architect, and develop top‑notch solutions. The team recently completed a major initiative implementing a consensus protocol based on Raft, allowing removal of the Zookeeper dependency for more scalable metadata management. What You Will Do Drive end‑to‑end delivery of complex, multi‑quarter technical projects and critical infrastructure components from concept to production, setting a high bar for operational excellence, scalability, reliability, and security. Act as a primary technical escalation point for complex, elusive production issues and architectural challenges, proactively identifying systemic weaknesses and driving large‑scale refactoring or architectural changes. Exert influence across multiple teams and organizational boundaries to align technical direction, mitigate cross‑cutting risks, and ensure cohesive, high‑quality solution delivery. Serve as a technical voice of the customer, translating ambiguous, high‑level business problems into clear, executable technical strategies and architectures that drive significant customer value and product adoption. Act as a force multiplier by mentoring and coaching engineers, elevating overall technical acumen and best practices across the organization. What You Will Bring BS, MS, or PhD in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience. 8+ years of progressive experience in designing, building, and operating large‑scale, mission‑critical distributed systems. Deep, expert‑level understanding of distributed systems fundamentals, including consensus protocols (Raft/Paxos), consistency models, fault‑tolerance, and high‑availability architecture. Experience building and operating large‑scale systems in the Cloud. Solid understanding of basic systems operations (disk, network, operating systems, etc.). Demonstrated history of mentoring engineers and driving significant improvement in engineering practices and operational rigor across multiple teams. Proficiency in Java, Scala, C/C++, Go, or other statically typed languages. What Gives You an Edge Expert‑level proficiency in Java and the JVM ecosystem, including threading, performance tuning, and diagnostics. Hands‑on experience with consensus algorithms (Raft, Paxos, etc.) or operating large‑scale coordination services (ZooKeeper, etcd, Consul). A strong background in distributed storage systems or databases. Experience/knowledge with public clouds (AWS, Azure, or GCP). Interest in evangelism (giving talks at tech conferences, writing blog posts evangelizing Kafka). Ready to build what’s next? Let’s get in motion. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. Employment decisions are based on job‑related criteria, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other classification protected by law. #J-18808-Ljbffr