Sr. -Source Software Engineer - Apache Cassandra

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Job Summary

Are you an Apache Cassandra committer who wants to operate at the highest level of technical and community influence? This role connects deep upstream work – binding committer authority, CEP-level design, release stewardship – directly to production‑scale outcomes in one of the largest enterprise Cassandra deployments in the world. Net App Instaclustr runs one of the industry's largest Cassandra managed services, spanning a broad range of enterprise customers across financial services, retail, and technology sectors.

Our Cassandra engineering team leads active work on Cassandra 6.0, owns releases across core and ecosystem subprojects, and drives upstream contributions that directly address production‑scale operator needs. The successful applicant will become our second Apache Cassandra core committer, joining a team that already includes an established core committer and a committer on the Cassandra Drivers project. You will work at both levels – upstream influence and customer impact – with meaningful autonomy, strong peer collaboration, and direct access to the product and field relationships that turn technical work into commercial outcomes.

This is a globally distributed team with up to 10% travel. The role is based in one of our office locations – US. Note that we have global opportunities as well in Cork, Ireland & Netherlands (Schiphol). (San Jose, Raleigh, Boston, or Seattle), requires 3 days per week in office.

As a Senior Open Source Software Engineer, your responsibilities will include:

• Lead end-to-end upstream initiatives in Apache Cassandra, from CEP authoring and design consensus through implementation, review, and release, in domains such as storage/compaction, indexing and SAI/vector, distributed repair, observability, and Cassandra releases.
• Provide binding committer reviews on upstream patches and community contributions, applying the technical rigor and authority that moves high‑quality work through the Apache Cassandra review process.
• Co‑own Apache Cassandra core release management as part of the rotating committer pool and, where capacity allows, contribute to Net App‑led ecosystem releases (Cassandra Sidecar, Analytics, GoCQL).
• Translate enterprise customer needs into credible upstream proposals, CEP‑level designs, and sustained technical engagement that only a committer can supply; advise product and field teams on complex upstream trade‑offs.
• Shape community direction through evidence‑based participation on the dev@ mailing list, Apache Jira, Git Hub, and community forums; influence project decisions on architecture, release policy, contribution standards, and long‑term roadmap.
• Mentor engineers toward committer standing and raise overall contribution quality through rigorous review practices, test discipline, and clear engineering guidance.
• Improve upstream infrastructure – CI reliability, test coverage, contributor tooling, and release automation – to reduce project‑wide maintenance burden and strengthen Net App's reputation as a steward of the project.

• A minimum of 12 years of applicable professional software engineering experience is required.
• Current Apache Cassandra committer status with a sustained and publicly verifiable upstream track record across patches, reviews, and community standing in Cassandra core or a closely related subproject.
• Expert Java engineering capability in performance‑sensitive, concurrent, and production‑grade distributed systems – comfortable writing, reviewing, and reasoning about complex Cassandra internals at depth.
• Deep mastery of Apache Cassandra internals in at least one major domain: storage engine and compaction, indexing and SAI/vector, distributed consensus and repair (including Accord and CEP‑37), observability and virtual tables, or release management and CI.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical work through the Apache open…