Principal Software Engineer 1

We are a global team of innovators and pioneers dedicated to shaping the future of observability. At New Relic, we build an intelligent platform that empowers companies to thrive in an AI-first world by giving them unparalleled insight into their complex systems. As we continue to expand our global footprint, we're looking for passionate people to join our mission. If you're ready to help the world's best companies optimize their digital applications, we invite you to explore a career with us!

Your opportunity

We're looking for a seasoned software engineer and technical leader to join our core Streaming Platform group as a Principal Engineer. This team is the heart of New Relic's data processing capabilities, building and operating the high-throughput, low-latency pipelines that power our entire product suite. You will be instrumental in shaping the future of how New Relic ingests, processes, and leverages telemetry data at a massive scale.

If you’re ready for this job, you’ve spent years designing, building, and operating high-scale streaming data systems. You have deep expertise in technologies like Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, and cloud-native data services. You’ve faced the challenges of distributed data processing—and have the scars and successes to prove it. You are passionate about building robust, efficient, and elegant solutions to complex data problems.

Being a Principal Engineer at New Relic

At New Relic, Principal Engineers are force multipliers and technical visionaries, not gatekeepers. Your role is to elevate the teams around you, paint a clear picture of the technical future, and ensure everyone has the guidance and tools to get there. You'll help engineers see around corners, make durable architectural decisions, and avoid costly mistakes, empowering them to deliver incredible results.

Our playground is one of the largest in the industry. We operate a multi-cloud environment that processes petabytes of data per day and scans more than 150 billion data points each minute. Your work will directly impact the performance and reliability of the platform that our customers—including more than 50% of the Fortune 100—rely on every second.

What you'll do

• Define Architectural Vision: Define and drive the technical vision and long-term strategy for New Relic's core streaming data pipelines, ensuring they are scalable, reliable, and cost-effective.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Serve as a technical leader and mentor for multiple engineering teams working on the streaming platform. You will guide design, promote best practices in stream processing, and elevate the technical bar for the entire organization.
• Hands-On Prototyping & Development: Engage in hands-on development for critical path projects, building prototypes to de-risk new technologies, and optimizing existing systems for performance or cost.
• Solve Hard Problems: Tackle our most complex technical challenges related to data consistency, fault tolerance, and performance at extreme scale.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with product managers, engineering leaders, and other principal engineers to align the platform roadmap with business objectives and the needs of product engineering teams.
• Evangelize and Educate: As a distributed organization, clear documentation and communication are paramount. You will create architectural documents, tech talks, and best-practice guides to share knowledge across the company.

What Your Playground Will Look Like

• One of the largest Apache Kafka deployments in the world, serving as the central nervous system for all New Relic data.
• A sophisticated stream processing environment utilizing Apache Flink and other frameworks to perform real-time data enrichment, aggregation, and analysis.
• A multi-cloud architecture (primarily AWS) leveraging services like Kubernetes (EKS), S3, and other cloud-native technologies.
• A polyglot environment with hundreds of services written predominantly in Java and Go.

This role requires

Must-have:

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with a significant focus on building and operating high-throughput, low-latency distributed data systems.
• Deep, hands-on expertise with stream processing technologies such as Apache Kafka and Apache Flink.
• Proven experience designing and deploying large-scale systems on a major cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Strong proficiency in a systems programming language like Java or Go.
• Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership, drive consensus, and mentor engineers across multiple teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with experience articulating complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.

Bonus points if you have

• Experience with data lake technologies and architectures (e.g., S3, Delta Lake, Iceberg).
• Contributions to open-source projects in the data streaming or distributed systems space.
• Knowledge of observability principles and experience working with telemetry data (metrics, logs, traces).
• An advanced degree (MS or PhD) in Computer Science or a related STEM field.

Fostering a diverse, welcoming and inclusive environment is important to us. We work hard to make everyone feel comfortable bringing their best, most authentic selves to work every day. We celebrate our talented Relics’ different backgrounds and abilities, and recognize the different paths they took to reach us – including nontraditional ones. Their experiences and perspectives inspire us to make our products and company the best they can be. We’re looking for people who feel connected to our mission and values, not just candidates who check off all the boxes.

If you require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application or recruiting process, please reach out to resume@newrelic.com.

We believe in empowering all Relics to achieve professional and business success through a flexible workforce model. This model allows us to work in a variety of workplaces that best support our success, including fully office-based, fully remote, or hybrid.

Our hiring process
In compliance with applicable law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work and to complete employment eligibility verification. Note: Our stewardship of the data of thousands of customers’ means that a criminal background check is required to join New Relic. We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records based on individual circumstances and in accordance with applicable law including, but not limited to, the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance. Headhunters and recruitment agencies may not submit resumes/CVs through this website or directly to managers. New Relic does not accept unsolicited headhunter and agency resumes, and will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company that does not have a signed agreement with New Relic.

New Relic develops and distributes encryption software and technology that complies with U.S. export controls and licensing requirements. Certain New Relic roles require candidates to pass an export compliance assessment as a condition of employment in any global location. If relevant, we will provide more information later in the application process.

Candidates are evaluated based on qualifications, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, age, disability, neurodiversity, veteran or marital status, political viewpoint, or other legally protected characteristics.

Review our Applicant Privacy Notice at https://newrelic.com/termsandconditions/applicant-privacy-policy