Acceldata1mo ago

Principal Engineer - Open Source Data Platform (ODP)

Kitchener · KitchenerFull-Timelead

OtherData EngineeringEngineer

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Quick Summary

Overview

About the Role We are seeking a Principal Engineer with a minimum of 14 years of experience to serve as a technical visionary and thought leader for the Acceldata Open Data Platform (ODP).

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OtherData EngineeringEngineer

About the Role

~1 min read

We are seeking a Principal Engineer with a minimum of 14 years of experience to serve as a technical visionary and thought leader for the Acceldata Open Data Platform (ODP). In this role, you will define the long-term technical strategy, lead the most complex architectural initiatives, and represent Acceldata in the global open-source and distributed systems community. You will work directly with engineering leadership and executives to shape product direction while driving innovation across the organization.

This is a full-time, on-site position, open to candidates with valid work authorization.

What We Offer

~4 min read

✓Define and drive the long-term technical strategy and architecture for the Open Data Platform, aligning with business objectives and industry trends.

✓Own the design of the most complex, high-impact systems; establish architectural principles and patterns that scale across the organization.

✓Identify emerging technologies and industry trends; lead research and development initiatives that position Acceldata at the cutting edge of data platform innovation.

✓Serve as a recognized leader in the open-source community; drive Apache project contributions, represent Acceldata at conferences, and influence project roadmaps.

✓Collaborate with CTO, VP of Engineering, and product leadership to translate business strategy into technical execution; provide technical due diligence for strategic initiatives.

✓Influence engineering practices, tools, and culture across multiple teams; establish best practices that elevate the entire engineering organization.

✓Mentor Staff Engineers and Senior Engineers; develop technical leadership capabilities across the organization.

✓Lead resolution of the most challenging technical problems spanning architecture, performance, scalability, and reliability.

✓Engage with strategic customers and partners on complex technical discussions; translate customer needs into platform capabilities.

✓Drive alignment across engineering, product, and operations on technical decisions with broad organizational impact.

✓Work across diverse environments: Bare Metals, VM, Kubernetes, multi-cloud, and hybrid architectures at enterprise scale.

✓12+ years of hands-on software development experience with at least 8 years focused on distributed systems, big data platforms, or data infrastructure.

✓Proven track record of leading large-scale technical initiatives from conception to production across multiple teams.

✓Expert-level proficiency in Java or Scala; strong skills in Python and systems languages.

✓Deep expertise in distributed computing including consensus protocols, distributed transactions, data replication, partitioning strategies, and optimisation with modern table formats.

✓Extensive experience in architecting and scaling systems using Hadoop, Spark, Hive, Trino, Kafka, Flink, and related technologies at production scale (100s to 1000s of nodes).

✓Demonstrated ability to design and evolve complex systems that handle petabyte-scale data with high availability and performance requirements.

✓Expert knowledge of cloud-native architectures, Kubernetes orchestration, and multi-cloud deployment patterns.

✓Track record of diagnosing and resolving complex distributed system issues including performance optimization, resource management, and failure mode analysis.

✓Significant contributions to major open-source projects; experience working with distributed global teams and open-source governance models.

✓Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; proven ability to influence technical direction across organizations and with external stakeholders.

✓Ability to balance long-term technical vision with near-term delivery requirements; experience making build vs. buy decisions.

✓PMC member or committer status in Apache projects (e.g., Spark, Kafka, Hive, Hadoop, Iceberg, Flink, Trino).

✓Speaker at major conferences (ApacheCon, Spark Summit, Kafka Summit, QCon, etc.); published papers or widely-read technical content.

✓Experience building or contributing to query engines, optimizers, or execution frameworks.

✓Deep experience with modern lakehouse architectures, table formats (Iceberg, Delta, Hudi), and data mesh patterns.

✓Experience with ML infrastructure, feature stores, or MLOps platforms.

✓Experience scaling engineering organizations in high-growth environments.

✓Master's or PhD in Computer Science, with focus on distributed systems, databases, or related fields.