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Principal Software Engineer -- Operational Databases

Cloudera, Inc.
United States, California, San Francisco
525 Market Street (Show on map)
Nov 06, 2025

Business Area:

Engineering

Seniority Level:

Director

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.

We are looking for an exceptional and passionate software engineer with a strong distributed systems background to join the OpDB (Operational Database) team in the USA. The Operational Database team is responsible for the development of Cloudera Operational Database, Apache HBase, Phoenix, ZooKeeper and related projects.

  • Cloudera Operational Database (aka. COD) is a public cloud based solution based on Apache HBase and Phoenix

  • HBase is the Hadoop database, a distributed, scalable, big data store and is one of the most widely used components in Hadoop, an essential tool for data engineering.

  • Phoenix adds an SQL flavour to HBase, combining the SQL world with the scalability of HBase.

  • ZooKeeper is the high availability coordination service of the Big Data world and is one of the most widely used components in the Hadoop ecosystem, an essential tool for coordinating component instances in large clusters.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will be working in the USA based development team led by an Engineering Manager and together with its Hungary and India based peer teams you will develop, distribute and support COD, HBase, Phoenix and ZooKeeper. You will help us move our products to the next level, to be more supportable, enterprise ready and feature-rich so that more and more enterprises could start using them.

As a Principal Engineer, you will...
  • Be directly involved in the design and implementation of the core feature set of Apache HBase, Apache Phoenix, Cloudera Operational Database and related projects.

  • Help develop our roadmap by identifying issues and bottlenecks, analyzing and implementing changes and fixes in the components, increasing their overall robustness and reliability for the whole of the Apache community

  • As part of OpDB engineering, you will support enterprise customers running 100s of petabytes-scale operational database systems.

  • Partner with Engineering leaders, product managers, and cross-functional teams as a part of the Cloudera ecosystem in understanding requirements and turning them into a solid design and implementation, and facilitating integration and adoption.

  • Integrate the latest changes from Apache HBase, Phoenix and ZooKeeper into our distribution

  • Additionally, in this role, you will be responsible for leading a talented group of engineers working on the feature and mentoring junior engineers.

  • Work together with your teammates in all locations and with other component developers, making sure that our solutions operate flawlessly in the platform.

We are excited about you if you have...
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent, and 10+ years of experience

  • Strong backend engineering skill set with expertise in Java, or strong C++ skills, with intermediate Java expertise

  • Passion about programming. Clean coding habits, attention to detail, and focus on quality

  • Solid experience with system software design and development with a strong understanding of computer architecture, storage, network, and IO subsystems, and distributed systems

  • Hands-on programmer with strong data structures and algorithms skillset

  • Experience working in Linux environments

  • Good verbal and written communication skills in English

  • Solid interpersonal skills conducive to a distributed team environment

  • Ability to take ownership for large scale projects and leadership skills to drive them to success

You might also have...
  • Strong background in a distributed database systems, including database storage internals, NoSQL storage

  • Strong background in performance tuning, identifying performance bottlenecks, and implementing performance optimizations

  • Strong understanding of the Apache Big Data ecosystem and over 3+ years of experience in database systems

  • Recognized contributions to open source projects

  • Experience using projects such as HBase, Phoenix, Accumulo, Cassandra, etc., is a big plus

  • Good Understanding of database development, distributed database systems, scaling, performance tuning

  • Experience with cloud infrastructure is a great plus

This role is not eligible for immigration sponsorship.

What you can expect from us:

  • Generous PTO Policy

  • Support work life balance with Unplugged Days

  • Flexible WFH Policy

  • Mental & Physical Wellness programs

  • Phone and Internet Reimbursement program

  • Access to Continued Career Development

  • Comprehensive Benefits and Competitive Packages

  • Paid Volunteer Time

  • Employee Resource Groups

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