Lead Software Engineer

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

At New Relic, we provide our customers real-time insights, so they can innovate faster. Our software delivers insightful observability tools across different technologies and distributed systems, enabling software engineering teams to quickly identify, understand and tackle issues, analyze performance and get the most of their software and infrastructure.
If you are driven by innovation, passionate about technical excellence, and ready to lead a team of exceptional engineers, apply now for the position of Lead Software Engineer at New Relic.
At New Relic, you will architect and build the massive-scale streaming data platform that powers our industry-leading observability ingestion pipelines. Join us in our mission to revolutionize observability by engineering systems that process massive data volumes with extreme throughput and low latency.
What you'll do:

• Define and drive the architectural roadmap for our core observability ingestion pipelines, ensuring high availability, resilience, and operational excellence.
• Lead the design and development of highly concurrent, distributed systems using advanced Java, Kafka, and cloud-native technologies.
• Act as the principal technical expert, mentoring a team of engineers and establishing rigorous standards for code quality, testing, and performance optimization.
• Architect multi-cloud infrastructure solutions, optimizing primarily for AWS while leveraging Azure for cross-cloud compatibility and routing.
• Proactively identify and eliminate systemic bottlenecks through JVM tuning, advanced concurrency management, and efficient data structure design.
• Collaborate with cross-functional leadership to translate complex business requirements into highly scalable technical strategies.

This role requires:

• Experience: 8+ years in software engineering, with a strong focus on designing and building large-scale, highly concurrent distributed systems.
• Advanced Java Engineering: Expert-level proficiency in Java, including deep knowledge of JVM tuning, garbage collection optimization, concurrency, and multithreading under extreme load.
• Distributed Streaming: Mastery of Apache Kafka (or AWS MSK), including deep understanding of partition strategies, consumer group rebalancing, and high-throughput tuning.
• Cloud Architecture: Extensive hands-on experience with AWS compute and data services (EKS, S3) and strong architectural knowledge of Kubernetes and Docker.
• System Design: Exceptional problem-solving skills with a strong foundation in data structures, algorithms, and resilient microservices design.
• Technical Leadership: Proven track record of defining technical vision, mentoring engineers, and successfully leading the delivery of mission-critical systems.

Good to have skills:

• Familiarity with stream processing frameworks, preferably Apache Flink or Kafka Streams.
• Practical experience with Azure equivalents (e.g., Event Hubs, AKS, Blob Storage).
• Experience utilizing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform for automated provisioning.
• Experience establishing and improving CI/CD pipelines and DevSecOps best practices.

Bonus points if you have:

• Observability Domain Expertise: Deep understanding of the MELT stack (Metrics, Events, Logs, Traces) and OpenTelemetry (OTel) standards.
• High Cardinality Solutions: Proven experience designing systems capable of handling high-cardinality time-series data at massive scale.
• Significant contributions to open-source projects in distributed systems, stream processing, or observability domains.

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