Principal Engineer - Observability Telemetry Client Infrastructure

Cloudera is a leading company in data management, empowering organizations to transform complex data into actionable insights. They are seeking a Principal Engineer to architect and lead the development of their Observability Telemetry client interactions framework, focusing on building a high-throughput telemetry fabric for large data estates.

Responsibilities:

• Architect and drive the implementation of automated "on-ramps" for observability clients that handles the complexity of multi-cloud, hybrid environments without sacrificing performance, ensuring teams can integrate their services with minimal friction
• Establish and enforce the semantic conventions needed to ensure telemetry data carries the appropriate context for easy correlation across the entire Cloudera stack
• Develop and support high-performance interfaces and SDKs for clients across various languages (Java, Go, Python, etc.) to contribute high-fidelity signals
• Build the logic to stitch together disparate signals into a unified trace, enabling deep-dive workload analysis and financial governance across massive distributed systems
• Work alongside engineering teams to turn architectural blueprints into production reality, conducting deep-dive code reviews and resolving complex systemic bottlenecks
• Serve as the "go-to" expert for observability, resolving technical disagreements and making high-stakes decisions on the future of our telemetry platform

Requirements:

• 10+ years of experience (or equivalent advanced degree + experience) designing and maintaining large-scale distributed systems and observability platforms
• A proven track record of designing and shipping complex, critical features that serve as foundational infrastructure for other engineering teams
• Deep, hands-on experience with the OpenTelemetry Collector architecture, custom processors, and the challenges of high-cardinality data
• Experience with high-volume OLAP engines (e.g., ClickHouse, StarRocks) and an understanding of how to structure telemetry data for sub-second queries at large scale
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills and the ability to build relationships across the company to drive adoption of new standards and remove technical roadblocks
• The ability to map business requirements to technical roadmaps, ensuring our observability tools support Cloudera's long-term strategic goals
• Experience coaching senior and staff-level engineers, acting as a 'force multiplier' for a technical organization
• Bsc/Msc in related field or equivalent experience
• Significant contributions to major observability or data projects (e.g., CNCF or Apache projects). Bonus points if you're already a CNCF OTel maintainer
• Deep experience with Kubernetes-native observability and managing telemetry at scale in hybrid-cloud environments
• Experience representing technical initiatives at industry conferences or internal company-wide summits
• Experience using machine learning or advanced analytics to derive 'AIOps' insights from raw telemetry data