Staff Software Engineer - Cloudera Context Search Team

Business Area:

Engineering

Seniority Level:

Mid-Senior level

Job Description: 

At Cloudera, we empower people to transform complex data into clear and actionable insights. With as much data under management as the hyperscalers, we're the preferred data partner for the top companies in almost every industry.  Powered by the relentless innovation of the open source community, Cloudera advances digital transformation for the world’s largest enterprises.

The Data Platform Pillar is the bedrock of Cloudera’s technology, where we design and build the core components that let our customers store, manage, and process data with unmatched scalability, security, and performance.

As a Staff Engineer on the Cloudera Context Search Team, you will be a key technical leader and architect for the search heartbeat of the Cloudera Data Platform (CDP). You will drive the technical vision and strategic evolution of high-performance, scalable, and secure search infrastructure that powers data discovery, observability, and analytics for the world’s largest enterprises.

As a Staff Engineer, you will:

• Architectural Leadership: Drive the multi-quarter technical roadmap and design large-scale OpenSearch clusters capable of handling petabytes of data with low-latency indexing and query performance.

• Platform Integration: Deeply integrate OpenSearch with CDP components (e.g., Apache Iceberg, SDX, and Ozone) to provide a unified search experience across the data lakehouse.

• Performance Optimization: Lead efforts to optimize JVM settings, shard allocation strategies, and query DSL to ensure maximum throughput and stability.

• Cloud Native Operations: Oversee the development of Kubernetes Operators and Helm charts for automated deployment, scaling, and self-healing of search services.

• Engineering Excellence: Define and champion best practices for security (RBAC, TLS), observability, and enterprise-grade reliability.

• Mentorship & Influence: Mentor senior and junior engineers on complex technical designs and foster a culture of continuous improvement across the organization.

• Community Contribution: Act as a primary liaison and influencer within the upstream OpenSearch community, aligning their roadmap with product strategy.

We are excited about you if you have:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent, and 6+ years of experience; OR Master’s degree and 4-6 years of experience; OR PhD and 2-4 years of experience

• 6+ years of experience working with OpenSearch or Elasticsearch in production environments at scale.

• Distributed Systems: Deep understanding of consensus algorithms, CAP theorem, replication, and sharding.

• Programming: Mastery of Java (for core development) and proficiency in Go or Python for automation and tooling.

• Infrastructure: Extensive experience with Kubernetes (K8s) and container orchestration.

• Cloud Platforms: Hands-on experience deploying search workloads on AWS (EKS/AOSS), Azure (AKS), or Google Cloud (GKE).

You might also have:

• Experience with Lucene internals (segment merging, bitsets, and codecs).

• Knowledge of Vector Database capabilities within OpenSearch for Generative AI (RAG) use cases.

• History of contributing to open-source projects (Apache Software Foundation or OpenSearch Project).

Why this role matters: 

You will tackle complex distributed systems challenges, crafting the foundational software for the control and data planes that powers CDP and keeps it running at massive scale. Working at the forefront of hybrid and multi-cloud technology, you will empower data scientists, engineers, and analysts with the tools and infrastructure they need for advanced analytics and modeling.

 Collaboration is key, you will work alongside brilliant minds across product, data science, and engineering to drive innovation, standardize best practices, and shape the future of enterprise AI and data platforms. This is your chance to build the future of data and see your work make a global impact.

 

The expected base salary range for this role in

• California and Washington is $184,000 - $230,000

The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location

 

This role is not eligible for immigration sponsorship.

What you can expect from us:

• Generous PTO Policy 

• Support work life balance with Unplugged Days

• Flexible WFH Policy 

• Mental & Physical Wellness programs 

• Phone and Internet Reimbursement program 

• Access to Continued Career Development 

• Comprehensive Benefits and Competitive Packages 

• Paid Volunteer Time

• Employee Resource Groups

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