Senior/Staff Software Engineer

*Position is IN OFFICE at either our Santa Clara or Seattle office About Us Orkes is a platform for developers to build durable, distributed event driven applications. Based on the popular open source orchestration engine Conductor, Orkes lets developers focus on faster go to market with applications, scaling them to handle billions of workflows without having to worry about failures, scalability or visibility into the executions. We are looking for motivated Senior, Staff, and Principal Engineers.  Your day-to-day at Orkes: Lead architecture and design for core Conductor services, ensuring scalability, resiliency, and performance at massive scale. Tackle the most complex distributed systems challenges, influencing both near-term deliverables and future technical direction. Collaborate with product, design, and cross-functional engineering teams to deliver high-impact, business-critical features. Act as a multiplier—mentoring engineers at all levels, elevating team practices, and fostering a culture of technical excellence. Champion open-source contributions to Conductor, guiding community engagement and adoption. Evaluate and introduce emerging technologies, frameworks, and tooling to keep Orkes at the forefront of distributed computing innovation. Establish and enforce best practices in coding standards, testing, observability, and operational readiness. Partner closely with leadership to align engineering initiatives with business strategy and customer needs.  Stay up to date with emerging technologies and industry trends Qualities that will help you succeed:  Experience building backend systems, with deep expertise in Java and Spring Boot. Proven track record architecting large-scale, distributed systems and event-driven applications. Mastery of REST, gRPC, asynchronous messaging systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc.), and cloud-native architectures. Demonstrated ability to lead large, cross-team technical initiatives from inception to delivery. Strong technical mentorship and leadership skills, with the ability to inspire and guide other senior engineers. Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams and stakeholders.  Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced environment Strong analytical and problem-solving skills At Orkes, we foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and customer success. We empower our team to take ownership of their work and encourage them to explore new ideas and technologies that drive impact. You will have a fast start if:  Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure Knowledge of containerization and orchestration tools (Docker, Kubernetes) Familiarity with API design, REST, and GraphQL Experience with event-driven architectures and messaging systems The requirements listed in the job descriptions are guidelines. You don’t have to satisfy every requirement or meet every qualification listed. If y...