Principal Technologist

Description

Confluent is pioneering a fundamentally new category of data infrastructure focused on data in motion. Have you ever found a new favorite series on Netflix, picked up groceries curbside at Walmart, or paid for something using Square? That’s the power of data in motion in action—giving organizations instant access to the massive amounts of data that is constantly flowing throughout their business. At Confluent, we’re building the foundational platform for this new paradigm of data infrastructure. Our cloud-native offering is designed to be the intelligent connective tissue enabling real-time data, from multiple sources, to constantly stream across the organization. With Confluent, organizations can create a central nervous system to innovate and win in a digital-first world.

We’re looking for self-motivated team members who crave a challenge and feel energized to roll up their sleeves and help realize Confluent’s enormous potential. Chart your own path and take healthy risks as we solve big problems together. We value having diverse teams and want you to grow as we grow—whether you’re just starting out in your career or managing a large team, you’ll be amazed at the magnitude of your impact.

About the Role:

Our Technologists are researchers, utility players, high performers, and accomplished data streaming experts operating with high agency and autonomy. We constantly learn the latest technologies and study the market landscape to educate and influence Confluent’s decision-makers.

As a Technologist at Confluent, you will perform a technical yet cross-disciplinary role that involves four key parts:

Thought Leadership: Shape the industry thinking around Event Streaming, focusing on Developers, Architects, CTOs, and Analysts. Drive adoption of Apache Kafka and Confluent products.

Product Direction and Prototyping: Recommend notable changes in technology direction to Product/Engineering. Prototype early-stage ideas, explore practicalities of different software approaches and formalize new strategies for implementing them. Contemplate new capabilities more than twelve months out from the current product roadmap.

Competition and Technology Trends: Track technology trends affecting Confluent’s trajectory, analyze competitive threats from a technology perspective and look for opportunities.

Credibility: Establish credibility for Confluent by engaging with critical C-level customers, industry analysts, etc.

What You Will Do:
Technologists spend approximately 50% of their time doing high-impact, long-term research investigations taking one quarter or more. Example research projects include:

• Analyze a new concept or methodology (e.g., how data streaming integrates with generative AI), prepare a write-up, and convert that into a Kafka Summit talk and a blog post on the subject.
• Write a well-articulated white paper recommending to the product organization how some new trend might benefit our products, should it take off. Later prototype a capability that could be used in a company. Showcase this on developer.confluent.io.

Technologists spend the other ~50% of their time acting as utility players that support the company where strong technology and business acumen are needed: analyzing market trends, evaluating emerging competitors for key differentiation, briefing analysts, and meeting with customers’ executive leadership for strategic deals. Other examples may include:

• Support the Integration Architecture team in developing a serverless stream processing prototype. Help the Developer Advocate team shape a conference talk around serverless stream processing. Prepare and record an explainer video.
• Track and analyze competitive threats and prepare a monthly report for the company. Prepare a deep-dive analysis for one particular threat and present it to senior management.
• Design and author a page for developer.confluent.io on event modeling, providing practical advice on the contents of an event, practices for evolving event schemas, topic topologies, and handling identity, deletion, and other compounding factors. Research the work in collaboration with the community and Confluent’s Professional Services team.
• Collaborate with the engineering team on a blog series we want them to publish on distributed systems principles in the wild. Your role is to steer the content engineering creates, review, and contribute directly to the series if you wish.

What You Will Bring:

• Ability to extract the essential concepts and details from a complex technical domain, summarize, and articulate clearly and succinctly. Know when to dig deep
• Ability to confidently influence deals with Confluent’s C-level and C-level customers
• Experience creating novel content that reframes existing concepts in interesting ways
• Excellent writing style with the ability to clearly explain complex concepts
• Confident speaking style, spanning both technical and conceptual content
• Experience in operating with autonomy, delivering high-quality tasks, on time, and with minimal supervision
• Proven software development experience
• Industry Experience as a software engineer, well-versed in software architecture
• Broad understanding of the technology space in general, distributed systems, and business

What Gives You an Edge: 

Come As You Are

At Confluent, equality is a core tenet of our culture. We are committed to building an inclusive global team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, beliefs, and experiences. The more diverse we are, the richer our community and the broader our impact. Employment decisions are made on the basis of job-related criteria without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable law.

At Confluent, we are committed to providing competitive pay and benefits that are in line with industry standards. We analyze and carefully consider several factors when determining compensation, including work history, education, professional experience, and location.  This position has an annual estimated salary of 229,600 - 269,800 USD, an annual bonus, and a competitive equity package. The actual pay may vary depending on your skills, qualifications, experience, and work location. In addition, Confluent offers a wide range of employee benefits. To learn more about our benefits click HERE.

Click HERE to review our Candidate Privacy Notice which describes how and when Confluent, Inc., and its group companies, collects, uses, and shares certain personal information of California job applicants and prospective employees.

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