Principal Software Engineer 1

We are a global team of innovators and pioneers dedicated to shaping the future of observability. At New Relic we build an intelligent platform that empowers companies to thrive in an AI-first world by giving them unparalleled insight into their complex systems. As we continue to expand our global footprint were looking for passionate people to join our mission. If youre ready to help the worlds best companies optimize their digital applications we invite you to explore a career with us!

Your opportunity

Were looking for a seasoned software engineer and technical leader to join our core Streaming Platform group as a Principal Engineer. This team is the heart of New Relics data processing capabilities building and operating the high-throughput low-latency pipelines that power our entire product suite. You will be instrumental in shaping the future of how New Relic ingests processes and leverages telemetry data at a massive scale.

If youre ready for this job youve spent years designing building and operating high-scale streaming data systems. You have deep expertise in technologies like Apache Kafka Apache Flink and cloud-native data services. Youve faced the challenges of distributed data processingand have the scars and successes to prove it. You are passionate about building robust efficient and elegant solutions to complex data problems.

Being a Principal Engineer at New Relic

At New Relic Principal Engineers are force multipliers and technical visionaries not gatekeepers. Your role is to elevate the teams around you paint a clear picture of the technical future and ensure everyone has the guidance and tools to get there. Youll help engineers see around corners make durable architectural decisions and avoid costly mistakes empowering them to deliver incredible results.

Our playground is one of the largest in the industry. We operate a multi-cloud environment that processes petabytes of data per day and scans more than 150 billion data points each minute. Your work will directly impact the performance and reliability of the platform that our customersincluding more than 50% of the Fortune 100rely on every second.

What youll do

• Define Architectural Vision: Define and drive the technical vision and long-term strategy for New Relics core streaming data pipelines ensuring they are scalable reliable and cost-effective.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Serve as a technical leader and mentor for multiple engineering teams working on the streaming platform. You will guide design promote best practices in stream processing and elevate the technical bar for the entire organization.
• Hands-On Prototyping & Development: Engage in hands-on development for critical path projects building prototypes to de-risk new technologies and optimizing existing systems for performance or cost.
• Solve Hard Problems: Tackle our most complex technical challenges related to data consistency fault tolerance and performance at extreme scale.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with product managers engineering leaders and other principal engineers to align the platform roadmap with business objectives and the needs of product engineering teams.
• Evangelize and Educate: As a distributed organization clear documentation and communication are paramount. You will create architectural documents tech talks and best-practice guides to share knowledge across the company.

What Your Playground Will Look Like

• One of the largest Apache Kafka deployments in the world serving as the central nervous system for all New Relic data.
• A sophisticated stream processing environment utilizing Apache Flink and other frameworks to perform real-time data enrichment aggregation and analysis.
• A multi-cloud architecture (primarily AWS) leveraging services like Kubernetes (EKS) S3 and other cloud-native technologies.
• A polyglot environment with hundreds of services written predominantly in Java and Go.

This role requires

Must-have:

• 10 years of software engineering experience with a significant focus on building and operating high-throughput low-latency distributed data systems.
• Deep hands-on expertise with stream processing technologies such as Apache Kafka and Apache Flink.
• Proven experience designing and deploying large-scale systems on a major cloud platform (AWS GCP or Azure).
• Strong proficiency in a systems programming language like Java or Go.
• Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership drive consensus and mentor engineers across multiple teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with experience articulating complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.

Bonus points if you have

• Experience with data lake technologies and architectures (e.g. S3 Delta Lake Iceberg).
• Contributions to open-source projects in the data streaming or distributed systems space.
• Knowledge of observability principles and experience working with telemetry data (metrics logs traces).
• An advanced degree (MS or PhD) in Computer Science or a related STEM field.

Fostering a diverse welcoming and inclusive environment is important to us. We work hard to make everyone feel comfortable bringing their best most authentic selves to work every day. We celebrate our talented Relics different backgrounds and abilities and recognize the different paths they took to reach us including nontraditional ones. Their experiences and perspectives inspire us to make our products and company the best they can be. Were looking for people who feel connected to our mission and values not just candidates who check off all the boxes.

If you require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application or recruiting process please reach out to .

We believe in empowering all Relics to achieve professional and business success through a flexible workforce model. This model allows us to work in a variety of workplaces that best support our success including fully office-based fully remote or hybrid.

Our hiring process

In compliance with applicable law all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work and to complete employment eligibility verification. Note: Our stewardship of the data of thousands of customers means that a criminal background check is required to join New Relic.

We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records based on individual circumstances and in accordance with applicable law including but not limited to theSan Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Headhunters and recruitment agencies may not submit resumes/CVs through this website or directly to managers. New Relic does not accept unsolicited headhunter and agency resumes and will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company that does not have a signed agreement with New Relic.

New Relic develops and distributes encryption software and technology that complies with U.S. export controls and licensing requirements. Certain New Relic roles require candidates to pass an export compliance assessment as a condition of employment in any global location. If relevant we will provide more information later in the application process.

Candidates are evaluated based on qualifications regardless of race religion ethnicity national origin sex sexual orientation gender expression or identity age disability neurodiversity veteran or marital status political viewpoint or other legally protected characteristics.

Review our Applicant Privacy Notice at Experience:

Staff IC