Hiring: Principal Software Engineer, AI Platform Company: Redpanda Data Location: San Francisco, CA Job Posted Time: 2026-09-03 10:13:06 Employment Type: Remote Target Skills & Keywords : AWS, Azure, GCP, GitHub, Kafka, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, Protocol Buffers, SQL, Slack About the job Experience: •10+ years of software engineering experience, with a demonstrated track record of leading the design and delivery of complex, large-scale distributed systems Required Skills: •This is a hybrid role based in our San Francisco office. •Track emerging research, frameworks, and industry developments in the agentic AI space, and translate the most relevant signals into concrete engineering proposals and product bets •Identify, prototype, and deliver high-leverage emerging capabilities for ADP, in partnership with the broader team •Define architectural patterns for new ADP capabilities, ensuring they integrate cleanly with the existing runtime, policy, and observability layers •Engage directly with strategic customers and the field to stress-test new capabilities against real enterprise deployment scenarios •Serve as a technical ambassador for ADP externally, publishing research, writing engineering blog posts, and speaking at conferences to establish Redpanda's credibility at the frontier of agentic infrastructure •Participate in on-call and help drive down operational toil, improving system observability and self-healing capabilities over time Qualifications: •Fluency with AI-assisted development at the level of agentic orchestration, i.e. composing multi-agent coding workflows with subagents to dramatically accelerate research and prototyping •Deep expertise in at least one systems language (Go preferred) and comfort working across the stack •Understanding of streaming data systems, messaging infrastructure, or data plane/control plane architectures, experience with Apache Kafka or Redpanda is a plus •Self-directed, strong written communicator, comfortable collaborating asynchronously in GitHub, Slack, and Google Docs •Excellent interpersonal and communication skills. Able to lead without authority across engineering teams and engage credibly with technical customers and external audiences •Operational familiarity with AI safety, alignment, or responsible AI research as it applies to autonomous systems in enterprise environments •Background in security, identity, or data governance systems relevant to enterprise environments •Prior experience in an early-stage or growth-stage startup, especially in a category-defining product area Compensation: •$245,000 - $290,000 / year •Flexible work environment (work from home / hybrid options) Interested candidates, please apply directly through the job posting on company's career page or try via AI auto apply on this platform. Don't miss this opportunity to join a forward-thinking team!