Staff Software Engineer

Staff Data Platform Engineer (Real-Time Systems)

$160K–$200K base Equity

Hybrid — Costa Mesa, CA (3 days onsite)

U.S. Citizens or Green Card holders only

If you architect distributed systems that cannot fail — this role is built for you.

We’re scaling the real-time data backbone behind advanced autonomous systems and next-generation manufacturing environments. The platform you design will power live operational hardware across complex physical domains — where latency, reliability, and security are mission-critical.

This is not analytics.

This is core infrastructure engineering.

What You’ll Own

• Lead architecture for real-time streaming systems using Kafka, Spark, Flink
• Deliver sub-minute telemetry powering manufacturing and hardware systems
• Drive data lake modernization and platform scalability
• Build and evolve backend services on top of distributed data systems
• Establish reliability standards, observability, and SLAs
• Remove architectural bottlenecks and act as a true technical partner to platform leadership
• Shape long-term roadmap and technical direction

~60% hands-on engineering | ~40% architecture & strategic leadership

What You Bring

• Deep expertise in distributed systems and data platform architecture
• Strong Python SQL
• Java or Scala experience
• Spark proficiency
• Production streaming experience (Kafka or Flink)
• Proven ownership of platform-level architectural decisions
• Demonstrated impact improving reliability and scalability

Nice to Have:

Hardware or telemetry data experience, secure environments, infrastructure-as-code

Why This Role Stands Out

• Work on systems supporting mission-driven, national-scale initiatives
• Real-world operational impact beyond SaaS metrics
• Significant architectural ownership at Staff level
• 70% building new capabilities / 30% hardening and scaling
• Equity aligned with long-term company growth

If you want to own real-time infrastructure that supports critical operational systems — this is that opportunity.