Staff Software Engineer, Event Streaming Systems (Kafka)

TL;DR

Staff Software Engineer, Event Streaming Systems (Kafka): Building and evolving hirify.global's event streaming platform for business-critical workflows across multiple regions, with an accent on Kafka internals, distributed systems, and object-store-backed architectures. Focus on designing Tier-0 infrastructure, solving complex replication, consensus, performance, and reliability problems, and driving multi-year platform strategy across the organization.

Location: Must be located in the New York Metro Area for a hybrid position.

Salary: $193,800–$285,000 USD annually, plus equity opportunities.

Company

hirify.global operates a large-scale technology platform serving hirify.global, Wolt, and Deliveroo through business-critical event-driven systems.

What you will do

• Set the multi-year technical vision and architecture for the event streaming platform.
• Lead large, ambiguous streaming initiatives, including migrations toward diskless, object-store-backed architectures.
• Own company-wide architectural decisions across replication, consensus, storage, multi-region topology, capacity, and cost efficiency.
• Debug the most complex distributed systems issues under Tier-0 reliability and performance requirements.
• Align Storage, SRE, Data Platform, and Product Engineering on platform strategy and roadmaps.
• Raise engineering standards through design reviews, mentorship, and reusable technical patterns.

Requirements

• 8+ years of hands-on experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems in production.
• Experience operating Kafka or comparable event streaming systems at scale, including storage engines, replication, consensus, protocols, partitioning, and rebalancing.
• Strong programming ability in Java, Go, or a similar language, with deep expertise in concurrency and distributed systems.
• Strong fundamentals in Linux, networking, storage, and JVM-based systems.
• Experience leading high-impact, cross-team initiatives and influencing technical direction without relying on formal authority.
• Proficiency with AI coding tools such as Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor throughout the software development lifecycle.

Nice to have

• Experience with WarpStream, AutoMQ, tiered Kafka storage, or other object-store-backed streaming architectures.
• Contributions to Kafka, Pulsar, Redpanda, or related open-source distributed systems.
• Experience with broker and JVM tuning, partition management, Cruise Control, multi-region platforms, or Tier-0 infrastructure migrations.
• Track record of delivering major efficiency or cost improvements across streaming or storage fleets.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work environment based in the New York Metro Area.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, disability and life insurance, and mental health support.
• 401(k) with employer matching and commuter benefits matching.
• Flexible paid time off, 80 hours of paid sick time annually, and 11 paid holidays for salaried roles.
• 16 weeks of paid parental leave, family-forming assistance, wellness benefits, and equity opportunities.