--- title: 'Principal Engineer - Open Source Data Platform (ODP) at Acceldata' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/principal-engineer-open-source-data-platform-odp-acceldata-bengaluru-5266cx4decaz' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-10' --- # Principal Engineer - Open Source Data Platform (ODP) at Acceldata - **Company:** Acceldata - **Location:** Bengaluru, India - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-05-20 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10 - **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/acceldata/18f8c832-7a0c-4ccb-a0bf-9af63fabd9a1 ## Job description ## ABOUT THE ROLE We are seeking a Principal Engineer with at least 14 years of experience to serve as a technical visionary and thought leader for Acceldata's Open Data Platform (ODP). In this role, you will define the long-term technical strategy, lead the most complex architectural initiatives, and represent Acceldata in the global open-source and distributed systems community. You will work directly with engineering leadership and executives to shape product direction while driving innovation across the organization. WHY JOIN US? As a Principal Engineer at Acceldata, you will be at the forefront of shaping the future of enterprise data platforms, defining the technical vision for systems that power mission-critical workloads across the world's largest organizations. Your decisions will directly influence not only our platform but also the broader data ecosystem through open-source contributions and industry leadership. You'll work alongside Apache members, committers, and industry veterans who are passionate about solving the hardest problems in distributed computing. This is a rare opportunity to combine deep technical impact with strategic influence, building technology that matters while shaping the direction of a growing data observability company. ## RESPONSIBILITIES - Define and drive the long-term technical strategy and architecture for the Open Data Platform, aligning with business objectives and industry trends. - Own the design of the most complex, high-impact systems and establish architectural principles and patterns that scale across the organization. - Identify emerging technologies and industry trends; lead research and development initiatives that position Acceldata at the cutting edge of data platform innovation. - Serve as a recognized leader in the open-source community; drive Apache project contributions, represent Acceldata at conferences, and influence project roadmaps. - Collaborate with CTO, VP of Engineering, and Product leadership to translate business strategy into technical execution; provide technical due diligence for strategic initiatives. - Influence engineering practices, tools, and culture across multiple teams; establish best practices that elevate the entire engineering organization. - Mentor Staff Engineers and Senior Engineers; develop technical leadership capabilities across the organization. - Lead resolution of the most challenging technical problems spanning architecture, performance, scalability, and reliability. - Engage with strategic customers and partners on complex technical discussions; translate customer needs into platform capabilities. - Drive alignment across engineering, product, and operations on technical decisions with broad organizational impact. - Work across diverse environments: Bare Metals, VM, Kubernetes, multi-cloud, and hybrid architectures at enterprise scale. ## REQUIREMENTS - 15+ years of hands-on software development experience with at least 8 years focused on distributed systems, big data platforms, or data infrastructure. - Proven track record of leading large-scale technical initiatives from conception to production across multiple teams. - Expert-level proficiency in Java or Scala; strong skills in Python and systems languages. - Deep expertise in distributed computing, including consensus protocols, distributed transactions, data replication, partitioning strategies, and optimization with modern table formats. - Extensive experience in architecting and scaling systems using Hadoop, Spark, Hive, Trino, Kafka, Flink, and related technologies at production scale (100s to 1000s of nodes). - Demonstrated ability to design and evolve complex systems that handle petabyte-scale data with high availability and performance requirements. - Expert knowledge of cloud-native architectures, Kubernetes orchestration, and multi-cloud deployment patterns. - Track record of diagnosing and resolving complex distributed system issues, including performance optimization, resource management, and failure mode analysis. - Significant contributions to major open-source projects; experience working with distributed global teams and open-source governance models. - Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; proven ability to influence technical direction across organizations and with external stakeholders. - Ability to balance long-term technical vision with near-term delivery requirements; experience making build vs. buy decisions. ## DESIRED BACKGROUND - PMC member or committer status in Apache projects (e.g., Spark, Kafka, Hive, Hadoop, Iceberg, Flink, Trino). - Speaker at major conferences (ApacheCon, Spark Summit, Kafka Summit, QCon, etc.); published papers or widely-read technical content. - Experience building or contributing to query engines, optimizers, or execution frameworks. - Deep experience with modern lakehouse architectures, table formats (Iceberg, Delta, Hudi), and data mesh patterns. - Experience with ML infrastructure, feature stores, or MLOps platforms. - Experience scaling engineering organisations in high-growth environments. - Master's or PhD in Computer Science, with a focus on distributed systems, databases, or related fields. ## About Acceldata ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Acceldata provides an autonomous agentic data management platform that enables enterprises to observe, govern, and optimize complex data and AI workloads across hybrid cloud environments. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series C) - **Headquarters**: Campbell, California, USA - **Founded**: 2018 - **Founders**: Rohit Choudhary (CEO), Ashwin Rajeeva (CTO), Raghu Kandikonda (Co-Founder & VP Engineering) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Data Observability, Agentic Data Management, AI Infrastructure - **Target customers**: Large enterprises (B2B, Enterprise) – customers include Dun & Bradstreet, AT&T, Oracle, DBS - **Mission statement**: Deliver the promise of data quality and reliability at exabyte scale, blending the best of on-premises and cloud worlds, and providing real-time AI monitoring with structured, unstructured, and streaming data inputs. ## Products & Services - **Data & AI Observability**: End-to-end visibility into AI agents, Hadoop, data quality, pipelines, and platforms. - **Agentic Data Management**: Autonomous detection, diagnosis, and resolution across the data estate. - **Data Warehousing**: Modern data warehousing capabilities built on the xLake platform. - **Data Platform Modernization**: Open-source foundation for Hadoop modernization across cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments. - **xLake Platform**: The unified, customer-controlled control plane that runs every Acceldata product. Federated compute planes execute workloads where data resides, with built-in governance, observability, and lineage. ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed - **Key Metric**: Total Funding – Series C round (amount undisclosed); over 1 trillion data and agent interactions daily; 200+ teams worldwide rely on Acceldata. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Insight Partners (lead investor); key customers include Dun & Bradstreet, AT&T, Oracle, DBS. - **Growth Signals**: Headcount growth to 201–1000 employees; expansion into Canada (Kitchener) and UK (London); new product launches (xLake, Agentic Data Management); recognition as pioneer and leader in data observability category. ## Competitive Advantages - First to coin the term “Data Observability” and pioneer the category. - Unified xLake platform with a single control plane that works across hybrid cloud, on-prem, and edge. - Patented technology in data processing and related fields; contributions to Apache Ambari and Apache Zeppelin. - Deep expertise in complex data systems from founders’ experience at Hortonworks, Zalando, and Adobe. - Agentic approach – autonomous detection and resolution reduces manual intervention. ## Strategic Focus - Accelerating enterprise adoption of autonomous data management and AI agents. - Expanding hybrid cloud capabilities so workloads run where data lives. - Enhancing the agentic brain for orchestration, governance, and observability of AI agents and data pipelines. - Growing the platform from a single product to a suite of products (Observability, Data Management, Warehousing, Modernization) that can be used individually or together. ## Why Work Here - **Culture highlights**: Acceldata describes itself as a dynamic, innovative environment where creativity thrives, ideas flourish, and collaboration fuels breakthroughs. Values curiosity, diversity, and a shared commitment to excellence. - **Remote/hybrid/office policy**: Multiple office locations (Campbell HQ, Bangalore, Kitchener, London). Job postings indicate on-site, hybrid, and full-time remote options depending on role. - **Notable perks/engineering culture**: Deep technical roots in open-source (Apache projects) and big data systems. Opportunity to work on cutting-edge data observability and AI agent infrastructure at scale. Leadership team includes experienced executives from Hortonworks, Adobe, and other tech leaders. Series C funding provides stability and growth trajectory. ## Sources 1. [acceldata.io/about-us](https://www.acceldata.io/about-us) 2. [acceldata.io/careers](https://www.acceldata.io/careers) 3. [acceldata.io](https://www.acceldata.io/) 4. [jobs.lever.co/acceldata](https://jobs.lever.co/acceldata) 5. 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