Staff Software Engineer - Cloudera Context Search Team

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.

About the role

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).

Responsibilities

• 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.
• Deeply integrate OpenSearch with CDP components (e.g., Apache Iceberg, SDX, and Ozone) to provide a unified search experience across the data lakehouse.
• Lead efforts to optimize JVM settings, shard allocation strategies, and query DSL to ensure maximum throughput and stability.
• Oversee the development of Kubernetes Operators and Helm charts for automated deployment, scaling, and self-healing of search services.
• Define and champion best practices for security (RBAC, TLS), observability, and enterprise-grade reliability.
• Mentor senior and junior engineers on complex technical designs and foster a culture of continuous improvement across the organization.
• Act as a primary liaison and influencer within the upstream OpenSearch community, aligning their roadmap with product strategy.

Requirements

• 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.
• Deep understanding of consensus algorithms, CAP theorem, replication, and sharding.
• Mastery of Java (for core development) and proficiency in Go or Python for automation and tooling.
• Extensive experience with Kubernetes (K8s) and container orchestration.
• Hands-on experience deploying search workloads on AWS (EKS/AOSS), Azure (AKS), or Google Cloud (GKE).

Qualifications

• 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).

Skills

• Technical leadership and architectural skills.
• Experience with distributed systems and cloud-native operations.
• Proficiency in Java, Go, and Python.
• Experience with Kubernetes and container orchestration.
• Understanding of OpenSearch and Elasticsearch.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation package.
• Flexible work schedule.
• Professional development opportunities.
• Health and wellness programs.

Pay

Competitive salary based on experience and qualifications.

Schedule

Full-time position with flexible hours.