Senior Open Source Software Engineer at NetApp Instaclustr

Setup: Hybrid
Location: San Jose, California · Haarlemmermeer, North Holland · +1
Type: Full-time
Level: Senior

Description

NetApp Instaclustr is seeking a Senior Open Source Software Engineer to act as an Apache Kafka committer. This role involves leading upstream initiatives, providing binding committer reviews, contributing to release management, shaping community direction, and mentoring engineers. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in Apache Kafka, particularly in critical domains like broker internals, storage, replication, and Kafka Streams/Kafka Connect. They must possess expert Java engineering capabilities and demonstrate strong leadership in the Apache open-source governance model.

Required Skills

Apache Kafka committer
Java engineering capability
distributed systems
Kafka internals
KIP authoring
design consensus
mailing-list engagement
Jira-driven delivery
written communication
technical judgment

Additional Information

Required Previous Experiences: 12 years of applicable professional software engineering experience.
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.
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.