Principal Engineer, Public Cloud / R&D Core

Cloudera•Washington, DC

20h•Remote

About The Position

At Cloudera, we empower people to transform complex data into clear and actionable insights. With as much data under management as the hyperscalers, Cloudera is the preferred data partner for top companies across industries. Powered by open source innovation, Cloudera advances digital transformation for the world’s largest enterprises. The Data Platform Pillar is the bedrock of Cloudera’s technology, designing and building core components for scalable, secure, and high-performance data storage, management, and processing. Join the Public Cloud / R&D Core team as a Principal Engineer, leading groundbreaking projects that define multi and hybrid cloud data management capabilities. This highly technical role requires a technical sovereign of the Data platform ecosystem, responsible for influencing and building the core foundation of critical cluster management data platform components. The ideal candidate seeks diverse challenges, pushes the boundaries of distributed systems, and ships code enabling millions of events. You will be the key technical leader for the pod, ensuring strategic prototypes meet Cloudera’s global standards for technical excellence, scalability, and resilience. This role is crucial for tackling complex distributed systems challenges, crafting foundational software for the control and data planes that power CDP at massive scale. Working at the forefront of hybrid and multi-cloud technology, you will empower data scientists, engineers, and analysts with essential tools and infrastructure. Collaboration is key, working with product, data science, and engineering teams to drive innovation, standardize best practices, and shape the future of enterprise AI and data platforms, making a global impact.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent, and 10+ years of experience; OR Master’s degree and 6+ years of experience; OR PhD and 4+ years of experience
10+ years of experience building and scaling robust products.
Understand the trade-offs of low-latency, high-throughput systems at a fundamental level.
Deep track record of building concurrent, high-performance applications.
Expert-level proficiency with Kubernetes and Docker, understanding how to utilize containerization for building portable and resilient services.
Solid foundational knowledge of Linux environments, networking, virtual machines, and container technologies (e.g., Docker).
Practical experience using CI/CD solutions such as Jenkins and GitHub Actions.
Demonstrate a strong sense of ownership and a bias for action in your work.
Committed to clean architecture, maintainable patterns, and delivering software designs at the Principal level.
Strong background in public cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure), with expertise in security, infrastructure provisioning, containerization, and service enablement.
Good understanding of BareMetal and VM stack.
Deep expertise in public cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure), specifically in infrastructure provisioning, security best practices, service enablement, and containerization.
Familiarity with both BareMetal and VM technologies is also required.
Exceptional collaboration and communication abilities, enabling effective work with diverse, cross-functional teams globally.
A strong dedication to mentoring and developing team members, helping them reach their maximum potential.

Responsibilities

Serve as the primary technical lead, independently driving the design and architecture of complex, large-scale cloud services that underpin our multi-cloud and hybrid data management platform.
Determine the optimal technical approach to resolve high-friction challenges and deliver solutions that are highly scalable, resilient, and high-quality.
Act as the critical bridge between engineering and stakeholders (internal and external) to diagnose root causes of friction.
Translate ambiguous business requirements into precise engineering tasks and concrete architectural blueprints for the development team.
Drive technical excellence across the team.
Act as the technical authority for Senior and Full-Stack engineers, conducting rigorous code reviews, enforcing DevSecOps best practices, and guaranteeing all solutions meet "production-ready" standards.
Tackle the most difficult technical challenges and system interactions where existing documentation or standard procedures fall short.
Apply advanced engineering principles to debug complex interactions between Hadoop components and modern Cloud-Native architectures.
Synthesize technical insights derived from strategic initiatives and feed this information back to Cloudera’s core Global Engineering teams.
Use this deep understanding to directly influence the future architecture and product roadmap of the Cloudera Data Platform (CDP).
Influencing and building the core foundation of our most critical cluster management data platform components.
Ensuring that our strategic prototypes meet Cloudera’s global standards for technical excellence, including scalability and resilience.