Staff Software Engineer, Replication Foundations
AI in this role
Lead technical direction and architecture for core distributed replication systems and high-availability cloud infrastructure.
We’re hiring a Staff Software Engineer to join the Replication Foundations team within Temporal’s Cloud Global Services (CGS) organization.
Replication Foundations owns and evolves Temporal’s core replication stack in Temporal OSS—the distributed systems backbone behind key Temporal Cloud capabilities such as High Availability namespaces, cross-cluster and cross-region failover, and migration products that enable customers to move workloads between self-hosted Temporal and Temporal Cloud. The team also builds foundational scalability and reliability mechanisms that support Temporal at scale.
In this role, you’ll help set the technical direction for Temporal’s distributed replication systems. You’ll lead complex, correctness-critical initiatives spanning architecture, design, implementation, rollout, and operations. You’ll work across teams to evolve reliable and scalable replication capabilities that support both the open source project and Temporal Cloud.
What You'll DoSet the technical direction and evolve the architecture of Temporal’s OSS replication stack, from problem definition through rollout and operational support.
Lead the design and implementation of replication protocols that power:
High Availability namespaces
Cross-cluster and cross-region replication
Migration between Temporal clusters, including cloud-to-self-hosted and cloud-to-cloud scenarios
Drive scalability and reliability initiatives such as:
Multi-cell namespaces
Enabling a namespace to span multiple clusters
Improving load distribution and handling hot spots
Define and communicate system-level guarantees, including consistency models, ordering, idempotency, failure recovery, performance, and operational behavior.
Identify architectural risks and opportunities, and shape the technical roadmap for replication capabilities that support current and future cloud products.
Partner with Cloud Enablement, CGS, Product, and other engineering teams to align OSS replication foundations with customer and product needs.
Lead design reviews, raise the quality of implementation and testing practices, mentor engineers, and provide technical guidance across the organization.
Lead or contribute to debugging complex production issues, incident response, and follow-up improvements related to replication and core system behavior.
A track record of designing and delivering complex production distributed systems, including systems where correctness, availability, and performance are critical.
Deep understanding of distributed systems fundamentals such as replication, partitioning, consistency, fault tolerance, durability, concurrency, and failure recovery.
Experience defining system architecture, protocol behavior, invariants, and trade-offs in ambiguous or evolving problem spaces.
Experience debugging complex production issues, including concurrency bugs, data inconsistencies, partial failures, and performance bottlenecks.
Proficiency writing production-quality concurrent code in Go; experience with Java, C++, or similar systems languages is also welcome.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex designs and trade-offs to both technical and cross-functional audiences.
Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across teams, build alignment without direct authority, and mentor engineers.
A thoughtful and curious approach to understanding how systems behave under load, failure, and changing workload conditions.
Experience designing or maintaining replication protocols or data-plane infrastructure.
Experience with multi-cluster or multi-region architectures, including active-active or active-passive systems.
Familiarity with database internals, log-based replication, or event-sourced systems.
Prior contributions to large open source projects or distributed systems infrastructure.
Temporal Technologies is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Temporal Technologies does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need. We embrace and celebrate differences and diversity.
Temporal is committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. If you need to request a reasonable accommodation, please let your Recruiter know so we can assist.
How we rate this
Staff Software Engineer, Replication Foundations at Temporal rates 0 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Little AI. AI is not part of the work.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Open the description and count.
Prepare for this job
A free preview built only from this posting: what it asks for, what you could be asked in an interview, and how to adjust your resume.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where replication was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where high availability was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where scalability was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where reliability was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Distributed Systems, Replication, High Availability, Scalability, and Reliability. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them — a tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
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