Principal Engineer, Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK)

Amazon • Seattle, WA

5d

About The Position

As a Principal Engineer on the MSK team, you will define the technical vision
for MSK across its full stack — from core Kafka broker internals and tiered
storage architecture to MSK Serverless, MSK Connect, MSK Replicator, and deep
integrations across the AWS ecosystem. You will work backwards from customers to
translate their requirements into durable technical direction that benefits
every MSK customer. This role requires both the technical depth to redefine what
Apache Kafka can do at hyperscale and the organizational breadth to shape how
Amazon builds distributed systems. You will set technical strategy, raise the
engineering bar across the team, and drive innovation in the open-source Apache
Kafka community.

Requirements

• Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science or a related field

Nice To Haves

• Open-source leadership: Active contributions to Apache Kafka or other Apache streaming and data processing projects (Flink, Spark, Storm, Pulsar)
• Stream processing expertise: Hands-on experience with Apache Flink, Apache Spark Streaming, or similar frameworks
• Mission-critical systems: Experience building real-time systems with strict latency and throughput SLAs in domains like financial services, cryptocurrency, autonomous systems, or high-scale SaaS observability
• AWS experience: Deep familiarity with AWS services and cloud-native architectures, particularly in analytics, storage, or compute domains
• Technical evangelism: Conference talks, published papers, blog posts, or open-source work that has shaped the streaming data community
• Customer engagement: Experience working directly with enterprise customers on technical architecture and solution design
• Operational excellence at scale: Track record of building systems with high availability (99.99%+), automated recovery, and minimal operational overhead
• Cross-functional leadership: Experience leading initiatives that span multiple engineering teams, product managers, and business stakeholders

Responsibilities

• Define multi-year technical roadmap for MSK service portfolio (Provisioned, Serverless, Connect, Replicator) aligned with customer needs and AWS strategy
• Drive architectural decisions for distributed systems operating at hyperscale, including durability, availability, performance, and cost optimization
• Lead cross-service integration initiatives to make MSK a first-class citizen across AWS analytics, AI/ML, and data services
• Represent MSK in the Apache Kafka community through contributions to core project, participation in governance, and technical evangelism
• Mentor and develop senior engineers through design reviews, technical guidance, and raising the bar on system design and operational excellence
• Work directly with strategic customers to understand requirements, validate technical approaches, and ensure MSK meets mission-critical use cases
• Establish engineering standards for the team including operational excellence practices, testing strategies, and performance benchmarking
• Drive innovation in streaming data infrastructure, identifying emerging customer needs and translating them into technical solutions

Benefits

• health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage)
• 401(k) matching
• paid time off
• parental leave

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal