Principal Engineer - Open Source Data Platform (ODP)

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Define and drive the long-term technical strategy and architecture for the Open Data Platform, aligning with business objectives and industry trends.
• Own the design of the most complex, high-impact systems and establish architectural principles and patterns that scale across the organization.
• Identify emerging technologies and industry trends; lead research and development initiatives that position Acceldata at the cutting edge of data platform innovation.
• Serve as a recognized leader in the open-source community; drive Apache project contributions, represent Acceldata at conferences, and influence project roadmaps.
• Collaborate with CTO, VP of Engineering, and Product leadership to translate business strategy into technical execution; provide technical due diligence for strategic initiatives.
• Influence engineering practices, tools, and culture across multiple teams; establish best practices that elevate the entire engineering organization.
• Mentor Staff Engineers and Senior Engineers; develop technical leadership capabilities across the organization.
• Lead resolution of the most challenging technical problems spanning architecture, performance, scalability, and reliability.
• Engage with strategic customers and partners on complex technical discussions; translate customer needs into platform capabilities.
• Drive alignment across engineering, product, and operations on technical decisions with broad organizational impact.
• Work across diverse environments: Bare Metals, VM, Kubernetes, multi-cloud, and hybrid architectures at enterprise scale.

REQUIREMENTS

• 15+ years of hands-on software development experience with at least 8 years focused on distributed systems, big data platforms, or data infrastructure.
• Proven track record of leading large-scale technical initiatives from conception to production across multiple teams.
• Expert-level proficiency in Java or Scala; strong skills in Python and systems languages.
• Deep expertise in distributed computing, including consensus protocols, distributed transactions, data replication, partitioning strategies, and optimization with modern table formats.
• Extensive experience in architecting and scaling systems using Hadoop, Spark, Hive, Trino, Kafka, Flink, and related technologies at production scale (100s to 1000s of nodes).
• Demonstrated ability to design and evolve complex systems that handle petabyte-scale data with high availability and performance requirements.
• Expert knowledge of cloud-native architectures, Kubernetes orchestration, and multi-cloud deployment patterns.
• Track record of diagnosing and resolving complex distributed system issues, including performance optimization, resource management, and failure mode analysis.
• Significant contributions to major open-source projects; experience working with distributed global teams and open-source governance models.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; proven ability to influence technical direction across organizations and with external stakeholders.
• Ability to balance long-term technical vision with near-term delivery requirements; experience making build vs. buy decisions.

DESIRED BACKGROUND