Principal Platform Software Engineer (Java, Kafka)

Salary: $104,500 - 234,600 per year Requirements:

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience
• 5+ years of experience shipping services software
• Strong knowledge of data structures, algorithms, operating systems, and distributed systems fundamentals
• Working familiarity with networking protocols, including TCP/IP and and standard network architectures
• Knowledge of Internet protocols and standards, including REST, SSL, and
• Strong understanding of databases, NoSQL systems, storage, and distributed persistence technologies
• Strong troubleshooting and performance-tuning skills
• Preferred: strong understanding of event-streaming platforms such as Apache Kafka and Kubernetes
• Preferred: experience in a startup environment and delivering and operating large-scale, highly available distributed systems
• Preferred: strong grasp of Unix-like operating systems
• Preferred: experience building multi-tenant, virtualized infrastructure
• Preferred: experience designing, developing, troubleshooting, and debugging software for databases, applications, tools, or networks

• Lead cross-team platform projects, evolving middleware patterns and runtimes to support interoperability and multi-tenant scale
• Define and enforce versioning, deprecation, compatibility, and rollout strategies that minimize downstream disruption
• Establish shared observability baselines, including SLOs and error budgets, and drive resilience practices across services
• Design, develop, test, review, debug, and optimize software, services, and APIs; resolve complex technical, integration, and performance issues
• Guide software development lifecycle improvements, provide technical coaching, and lead code reviews
• Implement testing, quality assurance, logging, monitoring, secure coding, and other practices that support software quality and security
• Contribute to software architecture, performance and scalability strategies, architectural reviews, and technology evaluations
• Work with stakeholders and customers to investigate reported issues, agree on solutions, improve support processes, and recommend product enhancements
• Maintain and test systems, including upgrades and security patches, and improve automation, availability, health, and reliability
• Coordinate project work, timelines, deliverables, priorities, and resources across initiatives
• Collaborate across teams and with stakeholders to align solutions with shared objectives and customer needs
• Analyze and resolve complex problems, escalate critical issues, and document strategies and solutions
• Keep current with industry practices, pursue learning, and mentor junior team members
• Recommend and implement process improvements, then assess their impact
• Participate in candidate interviews, evaluate candidates, and provide hiring recommendations

• Cloud
• Support
• Kafka
• Kubernetes
• Network
• NoSQL
• Oracle
• REST
• Security
• TCP/IP
• Unix
• microservices
• API
• Java
• LESS

More:

We are collaborating with hackajob to recruit a Principal Platform Software Engineer (Career Level IC4) for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Our team leads platform projects that span multiple groups, advancing runtimes and middleware patterns for interoperability and multi-tenant scale. As customers increasingly adopt microservices and event-driven architectures, we are expanding our newly released service built around Apache Kafka, offering opportunities to contribute, grow, and learn. The stated U.S. hiring range is $104,500–$234,600 per year; the role may also be eligible for a bonus, equity, and compensation deferral. Pay and benefits information applies only to the locations specified in the posting.

last updated 42 week of 2026