Uber - Senior Software Engineer - Kafka

About The Role :

Uber is currently seeking talented developers with deep expertise and passion for developing large-scale streaming platforms.

The Kafka team, a crucial part of Uber's Data Infrastructure organization, is responsible for building and maintaining a messaging service that is highly available, durable, and provides end-to-end latency multi-trillion messages per day across tens of thousands of topicsand rapidly growingUber operates one of the largest Kafka ecosystems in the world.

At Uber, real-time platforms drive real-time business decisions, and Kafka serves as the backbone of Uber's real-time data analytics infrastructure.

Our mission is to architect, develop, and deploy world-class big data systems that empower every tier of our fast-growing organization.

In this role, you will have the unique opportunity to work directly on the Kafka open-source codebase and scale Ubers Kafka service for enhanced operability, efficiency, and security, impacting millions of users and internal systems globally.

What You Will Do :

- Develop and enhance core Kafka components to improve scalability, reliability, and security of Ubers Kafka infrastructure.

- Design and implement new Kafka features and extensions to meet the evolving needs of internal users and external contributors.

- Build and maintain services and tooling around the Kafka ecosystem, including Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams, and Schema Registry integrations.

- Manage Kafka cluster deployments at scale, including provisioning, monitoring, troubleshooting, and capacity planning.

- Collaborate with cross-functional teams including SRE, Data Engineering, and Product Management to ensure Kafka services align with business requirements.

- Conduct performance tuning and optimization of Kafka brokers and client applications to maintain low latency and high throughput.

- Investigate, diagnose, and resolve production issues and outages with a focus on root cause analysis and sustainable fixes.

- Contribute to Ubers open-source Kafka ecosystem, potentially driving innovations upstream to the wider Kafka community.

- Mentor junior engineers and foster a culture of excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement within the team.

Basic Qualifications :

- Bachelors degree or higher in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.

- 7+ years of professional experience building large-scale distributed software systems.

- Strong proficiency in Java, with hands-on experience in backend and systems software development.

- Deep understanding of distributed systems principles such as replication, consensus, partitioning, and fault tolerance.

- Experience working with Apache Kafka, including broker architecture, client APIs, and ecosystem tools.

- Familiarity with Linux systems administration and managing production-grade distributed services.

- Proven ability to write clean, maintainable, and testable code in a collaborative environment.

- Solid grasp of performance tuning and resource optimization in high-throughput systems.

Preferred Qualifications :

- Advanced degree (MS or PhD) in Computer Science or related technical discipline.

- Experience contributing to open-source Kafka projects or similar streaming platforms.

- Expertise in Kafka ecosystem tools such as Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams, Kafka Schema Registry.

- Proficient with infrastructure-as-code tools and cloud environments (e.g., Kubernetes, AWS, GCP).

- Familiarity with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.

- Knowledge of monitoring, logging, and alerting frameworks (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack).

- Experience with security best practices in distributed messaging systems, including encryption,

authentication (Kerberos, TLS), and authorization.

- Strong scripting skills (Python, Bash, or similar) for automation and tooling.

- Ability to troubleshoot complex production issues in real-time.

- Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with experience working in a highly cross-functional and

fast-paced environment.

If youre excited to shape the future of Ubers real-time data infrastructure and work on one of the largest Kafka deployments globally, wed love to hear from you.