Principal Engineer - Open Source Data Platform (ODP)
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About the role
ABOUT THE ROLE
We are seeking a Principal Engineer with at least 14 years of experience to serve as a technical visionary and thought leader for Acceldata's Open Data Platform (ODP). In this role, you will define the long-term technical strategy, lead the most complex architectural initiatives, and represent Acceldata in the global open-source and distributed systems community. You will work directly with engineering leadership and executives to shape product direction while driving innovation across the organization.
WHY JOIN US?
As a Principal Engineer at Acceldata, you will be at the forefront of shaping the future of enterprise data platforms, defining the technical vision for systems that power mission-critical workloads across the world's largest organizations. Your decisions will directly influence not only our platform but also the broader data ecosystem through open-source contributions and industry leadership.
You'll work alongside Apache members, committers, and industry veterans who are passionate about solving the hardest problems in distributed computing. This is a rare opportunity to combine deep technical impact with strategic influence, building technology that matters while shaping the direction of a growing data observability company.
RESPONSIBILITIES
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Define and drive the long-term technical strategy and architecture for the Open Data Platform, aligning with business objectives and industry trends.
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Own the design of the most complex, high-impact systems and establish architectural principles and patterns that scale across the organization.
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Identify emerging technologies and industry trends; lead research and development initiatives that position Acceldata at the cutting edge of data platform innovation.
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Serve as a recognized leader in the open-source community; drive Apache project contributions, represent Acceldata at conferences, and influence project roadmaps.
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Collaborate with CTO, VP of Engineering, and Product leadership to translate business strategy into technical execution; provide technical due diligence for strategic initiatives.
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Influence engineering practices, tools, and culture across multiple teams; establish best practices that elevate the entire engineering organization.
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Mentor Staff Engineers and Senior Engineers; develop technical leadership capabilities across the organization.
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Lead resolution of the most challenging technical problems spanning architecture, performance, scalability, and reliability.
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Engage with strategic customers and partners on complex technical discussions; translate customer needs into platform capabilities.
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Drive alignment across engineering, product, and operations on technical decisions with broad organizational impact.
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Work across diverse environments: Bare Metals, VM, Kubernetes, multi-cloud, and hybrid architectures at enterprise scale.
REQUIREMENTS
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15+ years of hands-on software development experience with at least 8 years focused on distributed systems, big data platforms, or data infrastructure.
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Proven track record of leading large-scale technical initiatives from conception to production across multiple teams.
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Expert-level proficiency in Java or Scala; strong skills in Python and systems languages.
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Deep expertise in distributed computing, including consensus protocols, distributed transactions, data replication, partitioning strategies, and optimization with modern table formats.
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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).
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Demonstrated ability to design and evolve complex systems that handle petabyte-scale data with high availability and performance requirements.
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Expert knowledge of cloud-native architectures, Kubernetes orchestration, and multi-cloud deployment patterns.
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Track record of diagnosing and resolving complex distributed system issues, including performance optimization, resource management, and failure mode analysis.
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Significant contributions to major open-source projects; experience working with distributed global teams and open-source governance models.
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Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; proven ability to influence technical direction across organizations and with external stakeholders.
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Ability to balance long-term technical vision with near-term delivery requirements; experience making build vs. buy decisions.
DESIRED BACKGROUND
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PMC member or committer status in Apache projects (e.g., Spark, Kafka, Hive, Hadoop, Iceberg, Flink, Trino).
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Speaker at major conferences (ApacheCon, Spark Summit, Kafka Summit, QCon, etc.); published papers or widely-read technical content.
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Experience building or contributing to query engines, optimizers, or execution frameworks.
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Deep experience with modern lakehouse architectures, table formats (Iceberg, Delta, Hudi), and data mesh patterns.
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Experience with ML infrastructure, feature stores, or MLOps platforms.
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Experience scaling engineering organisations in high-growth environments.
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Master's or PhD in Computer Science, with a focus on distributed systems, databases, or related fields.
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