Sr. Open Source Software Engineer (Kafka)

Job Summary

Are you an Apache Kafka committer who wants to operate at the highest level of technical and community influence? This role connects deep upstream work, including binding committer authority, KIP-level design, and protocol-aware engineering, directly to production-scale outcomes in enterprise Kafka deployments.

NetApp Instaclustr runs one of the industry's largest managed open source data platform portfolios, including Apache Kafka services for enterprise customers across financial services, retail, and technology sectors. Our open source engineering team contributes to projects that matter to production operators at scale, and this role strengthens our ability to influence Apache Kafka upstream in areas that affect reliability, performance, operability, and customer delivery.

You will work at both levels - upstream influence and customer impact - with meaningful autonomy, strong peer collaboration, and direct access to the product and field relationships that turn technical work into commercial outcomes. This is a globally distributed team with up to 10% travel. The role is based in one of our office locations - US REMOTE

Overview

As a Senior Open Source Software Engineer, your responsibilities will include:

• Lead end-to-end upstream initiatives in Apache Kafka, from KIP authoring and design consensus through implementation, review, and release, in domains such as broker internals, storage and log management, replication, KRaft metadata quorum, consumer group coordination, Kafka Streams, Kafka Connect, observability, and release quality.
• Provide binding committer reviews on upstream patches and community contributions, applying the technical rigor and authority that moves high-quality work through the Apache Kafka review process.
• Contribute to Apache Kafka release management as part of the committer community, including release planning, blocker triage, test stabilization, release candidate validation, documentation readiness, and post-release follow-through.
• Translate enterprise customer and operator needs into credible upstream proposals, KIP-level designs, and sustained technical engagement that only a committer can supply; advise product and field teams on complex Kafka trade-offs.
• Shape community direction through evidence-based participation relevant Kafka community channels; influence project decisions on architecture, compatibility, protocol evolution, release policy, contribution standards, and long-term roadmap.
• Mentor engineers toward committer standing and raise overall contribution quality through rigorous review practices, test discipline, and clear engineering guidance.
• Improve upstream infrastructure, including CI reliability, test coverage, contributor tooling, benchmarking, release automation, and compatibility validation, to reduce project-wide maintenance burden.
  
  

Job Requirements

• A minimum of 12 years of applicable professional software engineering experience is required.
• Current Apache Kafka committer status with a sustained and publicly verifiable upstream track record across patches, reviews, KIPs, and community standing in Kafka core or a closely related area such as Streams, Connect, clients, or release engineering.
• Expert Java engineering capability in performance-sensitive, concurrent, and production-grade distributed systems, with the ability to write, review, and reason about complex Kafka internals at depth.
• Deep mastery of Apache Kafka internals in at least one major domain: broker storage and log replication, KRaft and metadata management, consumer group coordination and rebalancing, protocol and client compatibility, Kafka Streams, Kafka Connect, observability, performance, or release management and CI.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical work through the Apache open source governance model: KIP authoring or co-sponsorship, design consensus, mailing-list engagement, and Jira-driven delivery from proposal through merge.
• Strong written communication for asynchronous, global, public technical collaboration - mailing lists, design documents, code reviews, and Jira threads.
• Proven senior-level technical judgment that resolves most blockers independently, determines approach on novel or ambiguous assignments, surfaces systemic risks proactively, and produces work that is consistent with project and team objectives.

Preferred qualifications

• PMC membership in Apache Kafka or a related Apache project.
• Track record of work in current Kafka feature and maintenance areas such as KRaft maturity, controller and metadata reliability, consumer rebalance protocol improvements, exactly-once semantics, tiered storage, Kafka Connect security and operability, Streams APIs, client metrics, or release stabilization.
• Experience connecting upstream technical leadership to enterprise customer and operator outcomes - translating production pain points into accepted community improvements.
• History of mentoring contributors toward reviewer or committer standing in an open governance project.
• Familiarity with the Kafka ecosystem: Kafka Streams, Kafka Connect, MirrorMaker 2, Kafka clients, schema and serialization patterns, Kubernetes-based Kafka operations, or adjacent open source projects such as Strimzi.

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering or technical related field of study Or additional equivalent experience.

Team Information

Leadership and team culture

The hiring manager for this role is an Engineering Manager for the Open Source Engineering team. You will join a globally distributed group that values committer-grade technical judgment, clear ownership, transparent community engagement, and practical impact on real customer outcomes.

The team culture is high-trust and high-accountability. We support engineers who can go deep technically, mentor others generously, collaborate across product and field functions, and improve both code and the contributor ecosystem around it. You will have significant autonomy paired with close collaboration and genuine visibility into the strategic bets your work enables.