What are the responsibilities and job description for the Staff Software Engineer position at Harnham?
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.
Salary : $160,000 - $200,000