Staff Software Engineer at Confluent
Mountain View, CA
$235,700–$277,000
Jul 21, 2026
Mountain View, CA
Jul 23, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior backend engineering role focused on building the infrastructure that runs AI model inference and agent execution directly on streaming data within Confluent Cloud. The work spans multiple systems — APIs, model and agent lifecycle services, control planes, and inference serving layers — primarily in Go, Java, and Python on Kubernetes. It suits an experienced distributed-systems engineer comfortable owning cross-team technical decisions and operating production-grade, high-reliability infrastructure.
Senior level · 10+ years · Remote · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 11,800 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 7,100–17,800
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $138,970 (middle half $107,524–$175,762).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
The posting names no specific work location or metro area — it appears to be a fully remote role.
The title carries no seniority level ('About the Role' framing only), so advertised seniority is Unspecified; however, the 10+ years requirement and cross-team technical ownership scope firmly support Senior.
Go, Java, and Python are listed together as 'proficiency in at least one… and willingness to work across all three' — they are interchangeable gates on the same requirement, captured as one skill with alternatives.
Kubernetes and distributed-systems patterns (control loops, API servers, high-scale control planes) are explicitly required in the 'What You Will Bring' section.
Model serving, LLM/agent infrastructure, and streaming data systems appear under 'What Gives You an Edge' — the preferred/nice-to-have section — so they are marked preferred. 'Kafka'/'Confluent' streaming platform knowledge is implied by the product context but not explicitly gated; captured as preferred.
No compensation figures are provided in the posting.
Read the full posting
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