Back to jobs

Staff Software Engineer, Replication Foundations

United States - Remote Opportunity

About Us

Temporal is an open source programming model that can simplify code, make applications more reliable, and help developers focus on the important things like delivering features faster. We are on a mission to be the reliable foundation of every developer’s toolbox, and are building the team that will make that happen.
 
Our values guide us —they are present in how we show up, make decisions, and work together to make an impact. We’re curious, driven, collaborative, genuine and humble.
 
Temporal is growing and we are looking for those who share our values, challenge 'standard' thinking, and want to influence our future. If you have a passion for improving the developer experience, building world-class open-source software and communities, and want to be a part of our amazing team, we'd love to hear from you!

Summary

We’re hiring a Staff Software Engineer to join the Replication Foundations team, part of 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 like High Availability namespaces, cross-cluster and cross-region failover, and migration products that let customers move workloads between self-hosted Temporal and Temporal Cloud. The team also drives fundamental scalability and reliability mechanisms that define how Temporal operates at large scale.

At the Staff level, you’ll operate as a technical leader in Temporal’s distributed core: shaping protocols and correctness guarantees, leading complex efforts end-to-end, raising engineering rigor across replication foundations, and partnering cross-functionally to ensure OSS primitives unlock current and future cloud products. This role is deeply technical and requires comfort reasoning about consistency, concurrency, failure modes, performance, and operational safety in correctness-critical systems.

Key outcomes you’ll drive:

  • Evolve replication protocols and correctness mechanisms that make failures (and cloud outages) a non-event for customers.
  • Deliver scalability primitives (e.g., multi-cell namespaces) that unlock the next phase of Temporal Cloud growth.
  • Raise the bar on safety, observability, and operability of Temporal’s replication layer across OSS and cloud.

What You'll Do

  • Lead the design and implementation of core components of Temporal’s OSS replication stack, from initial design through rollout and long-term operational ownership.
  • Design and evolve replication protocols that power:

    • High Availability namespaces

    • Cross-cluster and cross-region replication

    • Migration between Temporal clusters (cloud ↔ self-hosted, cloud ↔ cloud)

  • Build scalability and reliability capabilities such as:

    • Multi-cell namespaces

    • Protocols enabling a single namespace to span multiple clusters

    • Dynamic split/merge strategies based on usage, hot spots, and capacity needs

  • Reason deeply about correctness: consistency models, ordering guarantees, idempotency, failure recovery, and safe rollouts of protocol changes.
  • Drive cross-team alignment with Cloud Enablement and other CGS teams to ensure OSS foundations support current and future cloud products.
  • Author high-quality design docs that clarify invariants, trade-offs, failure modes, and operational playbooks for complex changes.
  • Raise engineering standards through reviews, mentorship, and technical leadership—improving correctness testing, fault injection, and incident readiness.
  • Participate in on-call/incident response related to replication and core system behavior, helping build durable fixes and prevention mechanisms. 

What You'll Bring

  • 10+ years building production systems, including significant experience with distributed systems and correctness-critical infrastructure.
  • Strong experience with replication, consistency, fault tolerance, and failure recovery in distributed environments.
  • Demonstrated ability to design and implement concurrent, correctness-critical systems with clear invariants and safety guarantees.
  • Proven track record of leading complex technical projects across teams—setting direction, driving execution, and landing changes safely in production.
  • Hands-on experience debugging complex production issues involving race conditions, data consistency, partial failures, and performance degradation.
  • Proficiency writing production-quality concurrent code, preferably in Go (Java/C++ or similar systems languages also welcome).
  • Solid understanding of distributed systems fundamentals such as replication, sharding/partitioning, backpressure, failure detection, and durability mechanisms.
  • Ability to operate with high ownership and minimal oversight, balancing deep technical rigor with pragmatic delivery.
  • Curiosity and rigor in understanding how systems behave under stress, failure, and scale.

Nice to Have

  • Experience designing or maintaining replication protocols or data-plane infrastructure.
  • Experience with multi-cluster or multi-region architectures (active-active / active-passive).
  • Familiarity with database internals, log-based replication, or event-sourced systems.
  • Prior contributions to large OSS projects or distributed systems infrastructure.

Compensation

  • The estimated pay range for this role is $212,000 - $286,200. 
  • Additionally, this role is eligible to participate in Temporal's equity plan.

 

Compensation ranges reflect salary and commission compensation (when applicable) across several geographic markets. Employment offers carefully consider multiple factors, including prior experience, knowledge, expertise, skillset, market location, and job level assessed during the interview process.
 
Employee benefits and perks below are for full-time employees, part-time or temporary positions are excluded. 
 
U.S. Benefits 
  • Unlimited PTO, 12 Holidays + 2 Floating Holidays
  • 100% Premiums Coverage for Medical, Dental, and Vision
  • AD&D, LT & ST Disability, and Life Insurance (Standard & Supplemental Available)
  • Empower 401K Plan
  • Additional Perks for Learning & Development, Lifestyle Spending, In-Home Office Setup, Professional Memberships, WFH Meals, Internet Stipend and more!
International Benefits

Paid Time Off (PTO) and Benefits outside the United States vary by country, and are issued in partnership with Remote.com.  Additionally, Temporal offers perks to all international employees for learning & career development, a lifestyle spending account, in-home office setup (in addition to company-issued hardware), professional memberships, work-from-home meals, and access to the Calm app for mental wellness.

Travel

Temporal is a globally distributed, collaborative team that values opportunities for in-person connection. Occasional travel may be required for company events, team offsites, and other meaningful moments that bring us together.

Additional Perks 
  • $3,600 / Year Work from Home Meals 
  • $1,800 / Year Professional Enrichment (Career Development & Professional Memberships)
  • $1,200 / Year Lifestyle Spending Account
  • $1,000 / Year In-Home Office Setup (In addition to Temporal issued equipment - laptop, monitor, keyboard, mouse, trackpad, and extension power cable at no cost to you)
  • $74 / Month Reimbursement for Internet
  • Calm App Subscription for Mental Health & Wellness
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.
 
We are not working with external recruitment agencies, thanks.

Apply for this job

*

indicates a required field

Resume/CV*

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Please list city, state, country or city, providence, country. Thank you!

Select...
Select...
Select...
Select...
Select...
Select...
Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Temporal Technologies’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Select...
Select...
Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 04/30/2026

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury
Select...

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.