Lead Principal Data Systems Software Engineer

Oracle•Pleasanton, CA

5d•$122,800 - $306,400

About The Position

Oracle is hiring a senior developer for its Exadata Database team to build a cloud-native, autonomous, multi-tenant smart storage service optimized for databases and designed to scale across thousands of tenants. Built on the Exadata platform, the service supports high-performance, highly available workloads and powers Autonomous Database offerings in Oracle Cloud and Cloud at Customer. The role combines production ownership with software development, with a focus on solving difficult problems in distributed, highly available services and virtualized infrastructure. The engineer serves as a domain expert shaping product architecture, technical strategy, and development velocity across product areas. The role defines scalable patterns for microservices and data modeling, including spatial and graph data; applies in-database analytics and machine learning; establishes service-level objectives; and uses testing and observability to enforce reliability and performance. The engineer also connects post-release outcomes to revenue, adoption, and retention, and works with product leadership to guide strategy. The position designs, develops, and deploys software to improve Oracle products’ availability, scalability, and efficiency; creates architectures and standards for large-scale distributed systems; and contributes to capacity planning, demand forecasting, performance analysis, and system tuning. It provides technical leadership across architecture, coding, testing, security, customer issue resolution, maintenance, and engineering practices, while mentoring developers and influencing cross-functional stakeholders.

Requirements

At least 10 years of hands-on software development experience, including design, implementation, debugging, and support of distributed, scalable system software or services, preferably in the cloud.
Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science, or equivalent experience.
Proficiency in Java or Python and scripting languages such as Shell, Perl, and Python.
Deep understanding of distributed systems and web services technology.
Experience building and debugging large-scale distributed systems.
Strong application of data structures, algorithms, and object-oriented design to solve challenging problems.
Track record of building and delivering mission-critical, 24x7 production software systems.
Familiarity with microservices-based software architecture and tools such as Nomad or Kubernetes.
Experience with container runtimes such as Docker, LXC, or LXD.
Knowledge of professional software engineering practices across the full software development lifecycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control, build processes, testing, and operations.
Strong desire to build, sense of ownership, urgency, and drive.
Systematic problem-solving approach and strong ownership and drive.
Experience communicating with users, technical teams, and senior management to gather requirements, explain product features and strategy, and influence technical decisions.
Solid understanding of performance and efficiency, with a strong customer focus.
Demonstrated ability to mentor software developers across engineering skill areas.
Strong verbal and written communication skills.

Responsibilities

Set product-wide patterns for microservices and data modeling, including spatial and graph data, to accelerate feature delivery.
Integrate in-database analytics and machine learning to support use cases such as personalization, recommendations, or fraud detection.
Define service-level objectives and enforce them through performance gates, query linting, and production telemetry.
Architect existing services and modern or emerging new services.
Lead initiatives to design software solutions, analyze requirements, and write foundational code for new projects or prototypes.
Improve software development lifecycle execution and coach engineers across teams or units.
Guide development of software features and enhancements, clarify design and code through documentation, and ensure accessibility.
Lead process, architecture, and code reviews across projects or products and services.
Debug and troubleshoot complex software issues using modern and emerging technologies.
Optimize testing, quality assurance, error logging, monitoring, and observability.
Promote innovation and industry practices to improve performance across products and domains.
Resolve complex API functionality and integration issues and implement API versioning, lifecycle, and interoperability strategies.
Lead design and development initiatives for software, systems, and services; define scope and review, influence, and approve design recommendations.
Provide architecture guidance, domain expertise, mentorship, and coaching to engineers and peers.
Conduct complex architecture reviews and ensure adherence to architectural standards.
Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to align software architecture with business and customer goals.
Develop performance optimization and scalability strategies in software design.
Research and evaluate technologies and translate findings into architectural decisions and plans.
Lead investigation of customer issues, root causes, mitigations, and product maintenance issues; provide technical guidance and support to customers.
Advocate for customer interests, recommend product enhancements, and coordinate timely issue resolution and communication.
Guide strategic customer issue and defect handling and training processes.
Work with security and leadership teams to establish and improve development practices and coding standards, and coach team members.
Lead peer review and quality initiatives to ensure development meets broad acceptance criteria and industry best practices.
Implement secure software development practices and automated solutions to prevent security vulnerabilities.
Lead periodic system maintenance, upgrades, patching, and testing operations.
Drive automation, testing, and debugging improvements to maintain service availability, health, support, and reliability.
Manage and direct timelines, deliverables, and budgets when applicable for critical, high-impact projects; adapt plans to changing priorities.
Influence cross-functional leaders and external stakeholders, build partnerships, and incorporate diverse perspectives.
Lead advanced problem-solving efforts, serve as an escalation point, identify root causes, and implement solutions that prevent recurrence.
Promote continuous learning, knowledge sharing, professional development, and thought leadership; monitor emerging technologies and industry standards.
Develop and implement process improvements, evaluate their effectiveness, and design metrics to measure success.
Advise on talent needs and organizational talent strategy; contribute to interviews, candidate assessments, and hiring decisions.
Solve infrastructure and cloud-service problems and build automation to prevent recurrence.
Design and deploy software that improves availability, scalability, and efficiency of Oracle products and services.
Facilitate service capacity planning, demand forecasting, software performance analysis, and system tuning.