As a Staff Engineer, you will design, build, and maintain backend functionality for scalable services, focusing on storage systems and reliability.
Who We Are
Temporal is an open source programming model that can simplify code, make applications more reliable, and help developers focus on the important things like delivering features faster. Our amazing user community provides us with real-time feedback and contributions to improve the developer experience everywhere.
Backed by top VC firms, we have built a team of professionals from various successful start-ups and well-known technology companies. Together, we collaborate cross-functionally, engage with and support our users to improve the developer experience, deliver world-class open-source software, and enhance our commercial SaaS platform.
Temporal is growing and working towards building the best community. We are looking for those who share our values, challenge 'standard' thinking, and want to influence our future. If you have a passion for helping developer communities, open-source software, and want to be a part of our amazing team, we'd love to hear from you!
Summary
Cloud Data Store (CDS) owns the storage, retrieval, and lifecycle of all workflow data at planet scale. We design the persistence APIs, build storage abstractions that run across cloud vendors, and deliver the observability that lets customers trust their state machines for years. [To see more detail re: the Temporal CDS Eng team, click here]
As a Staff Engineer, you will get the chance to design, build, and maintain significant portions of our backend functionality for highly scalable, multi-tenant services. You’ll own the custom persistence stack for Temporal Cloud which includes a Write Ahead Log, various metadata stores (Cassandra, etcd), multi-level caches, tiered storage etc.
What You'll Do- Design & build distributed data systems – craft APIs, schemas, and replication paths that keep petabytes of workflow history durable and query-able. Clearly document design choices and operational knowledge to successfully deploy and run service with those features.
- Drive reliability & performance – own SLOs, create chaos-test plans, profile hot paths, and lead incident reviews.
- Technical leadership – break down roadmap epics, mentor mid-level engineers, steward design docs through RFC.
- Cross-team collaboration – partner with the Server, Cloud, and DX teams to land features end-to-end.
- 5 or more years of experience as an "Arranger" and/or "Builder/Enhancer" of highly scalable distributed systems. see HERE for more info re: "Arranger" and/or "Builder/Enhancer"
- Solid computer science fundamentals in distributed systems concepts including multi-threading and concurrency.
- Experience writing concurrent code in production with languages like Go or Java or other applicable languages with skill level as "high end of Intermediate" and/or "Advanced" or "Expert" levels. see HERE for more info re: "high end of Intermediate" and/or "Advanced" or "Expert levels"
- Experience building and running services on AWS. Bonus: Microsoft Azure and Google GCP experience.
- Prior contributions to Temporal, Cadence, or other workflow engines.
- Deep expertise in a storage domain (LSM trees, columnar stores, transactional logs, etc.).
- Operated multi-region, ≥99.99 % uptime services.
- Experience working with Open Source Systems.
- Experience in building K8s controllers and/or CRDs is a plus
Compensation
- The estimated pay range for this role is $190,000 - $265,000 depending on locale.
- Additionally, this role is eligible to participate in Temporal's equity plan.
Compensation ranges reflect salary and commission compensation (when applicable) across several geographic markets. Employment offers carefully consider multiple factors, including prior experience, knowledge, expertise, skillset, market location, and job level assessed during the interview process.
Employee benefits and perks below are for full-time employees, part-time or temporary positions are excluded.
U.S. Benefits
- Unlimited PTO, 12 Holidays + 2 Floating Holidays
- 100% Premiums Coverage for Medical, Dental, and Vision
- AD&D, LT & ST Disability, and Life Insurance (Standard & Supplemental Available)
- Empower 401K Plan
- Additional Perks for Learning & Development, Lifestyle Spending, In-Home Office Setup, Professional Memberships, WFH Meals, Internet Stipend and more!
International Benefits
- Paid Time Off (PTO) and Benefits outside the United States vary by country, and are issued in partnership with Remote.com. Additionally, Temporal offers perks to all international employees for learning & career development, a lifestyle spending account, in-home office setup (in addition to company-issued hardware), professional memberships, work-from-home meals, and access to the Calm app for mental wellness.
Additional Perks
- $3,600 / Year Work from Home Meals
- $1,500 / Year Career Development & Learning
- $1,200 / Year Lifestyle Spending Account
- $1,000 / Year In-Home Office Setup (In addition to Temporal issued equipment - laptop, monitor, keyboard, mouse, trackpad, and extension power cable at no cost to you)
- $500 / Year Professional Memberships
- $74 / Month Reimbursement for Internet
- Calm App Subscription for Mental Health & Wellness
Temporal Technologies is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Temporal Technologies does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need. We embrace and celebrate differences and diversity.
Temporal is committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. If you need to request a reasonable accommodation, please let your Recruiter know so we can assist.
We are not working with external recruitment agencies, thanks.
Top Skills
AWS
Cassandra
Etcd
Go
Google Gcp
Java
Kubernetes
Azure
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