Senior Staff Data Platform Engineer - Kafka - Apache Iceberg - Apache Spark

Position Location: This is a  Flexible (Hybrid)  position.   Flexible  positions require 2 days per week in a ServiceNow office location.  We have offices in several locations, including San Francisco, CA; Pleasanton, CA; Santa Clara, CA; San Diego, CA Please Note:   This position will include supporting our US Regulated Markets. “This position requires passing a ServiceNow background screening, USFedPASS (US Federal Personnel Authorization Screening Standards). This includes a credit check, criminal/misdemeanor check and taking a drug test. Any employment is contingent upon passing the screening.   Due to Federal requirements, only US citizens, US naturalized citizens or US Permanent Residents, holding a green card, will be considered. Team Overview The  Data Platform  group builds highly scalable, high‑performance platform capabilities for data‑in‑motion and backend storage systems. Our customers operate at massive scale, pushing the boundaries of data volume, throughput, and concurrency. We are looking for a seasoned  IC5 Senior Staff Engineer  with deep expertise in  distributed systems ,  data ingestion pipelines , and  Data Lake architectures  to drive next‑generation platform innovation. Role Summary As an IC5 Senior Staff Engineer , you will architect and deliver large‑scale distributed platform components, lead complex technical initiatives, and define engineering best practices. You will bring strong leadership, hands-on engineering depth, and the ability to design and operate reliable, scalable, and high‑performance data systems. What you get to do in this role: Architect, design, and build high‑performance distributed systems and platform components. Build distributed systems data ingestion solutions with strong emphasis on scalability, quality, and operational excellence. Design software that is easy to use, extend, and customize for customer‑specific environments. Deliver high‑quality, clean, modular, and reusable code while enforcing engineering best practices (code reviews, unit testing, automation, design reviews). Build foundational libraries, frameworks, and tools focused on modularity, extensibility, configurability, and maintainability. Collaborate across engineering teams to refine requirements and deliver end‑to‑end solutions. Provide technical leadership for projects with significant complexity and risk. Research, evaluate, and adopt new technologies that enhance platform capabilities. Troubleshoot and diagnose complex production issues across distributed systems. To be successful in this role you have: Experience leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into engineering work — whether using AI-powered coding and operational tooling, automating workflows, or reasoning about how AI changes the way software and infrastructure are built. 10+ years of software development experience with a Bachelor's degree; OR 8+ years with a Master's degree; OR 6+ years with a PhD OR equivalent work experience. Core Distributed Systems Expertise Strong fundamentals in distributed systems architecture, design patterns, and algorithms. Deep programming expertise in  Java , including JVM internals, memory models, and garbage collection. Proven experience in  JVM performance tuning , profiling, and diagnosing performance bottlenecks. Strong understanding of concurrency, networking, sockets, OS internals, and performance optimization. Hands-on experience building and operating large‑scale distributed systems. Experience with relational databases such as Oracle, MySQL, or PostgreSQL. Streaming & Messaging Systems Experience with large‑scale deployments of  Kafka , or similar streaming platforms. Deep knowledge of stream processing, topic design, partitioning, replication, and HA strategies. Experience working within DevOps environments for operationalizing distributed platforms. Demonst