Senior Software Engineer, Backend - Data Layer at Camunda

About the Role

As a Backend Senior Software Engineer on the Data Layer team, you will help build and evolve the storage and query layer that keeps Camunda 8's process data fast, accurate, and available at scale. This role spans both relational databases and Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, powering everything from process monitoring to the new agent-driven automation capabilities. As part of the Data Layer team, you will tackle technically challenging projects, such as reshaping how we store and retain process data, streaming data to external systems, and evolving our secondary storage systems for greater scale.

At Camunda, we champion a holistic engineering approach. You will form strong partnerships with product management, design, QA, and support, working with peers not only to deliver but also to directly influence how our data layer evolves to meet customer needs.

Curious about the challenges ahead? Watch this quick 30-minute talk from our engineers to learn more about the new Camunda Exporter and how we solve complex problems at scale.

What You Will Do

• Design, build, and maintain backend services for the data layer that stores and serves Camunda 8's process data, spanning relational databases and Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, maintaining a focus on correctness, performance, and scale.
• Own the end-to-end delivery of engineering initiatives, collaborating with Product Management and colleagues across the business to translate requirements into concrete solution designs, ensuring timely and high-quality delivery.
• Assist in evolving how we process, retain, and expose process data so customers can interact with their data as needed.
• Invest in improving the performance and scalability of our secondary storage systems as usage increases, and develop tooling to simplify the understanding, troubleshooting, and safe operation of the data layer in production.
• Participate in L3 support and on-call rotations, partnering with Support and SRE to investigate production data layer issues, feeding insights back into the product development cycle.

What You Will Bring to the Role

Must Haves

• A minimum of 7 years of experience as a backend engineer, specifically in Java, with a strong background in backend systems and production data stores.
• Deep expertise with both Relational Databases (ideally PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, or MSSQL) and Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, including practical knowledge of query performance, indexing, and data modeling trade-offs.
• Proven success in leading medium to large engineering initiatives (over 3 months) from start to finish, covering solution design, project planning, cross-team coordination, and ensuring predictable delivery.
• Proficiency in investigating slow queries, execution plans, and index usage to resolve data related production problems.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills in a remote-first setting: you must translate requirements into actionable technical tasks with Product and provide clear, direct feedback during code reviews.

Nice to Haves

• Experience developing workflow automation or process orchestration software.
• Experience building or maintaining continuous integration pipelines.
• Familiarity with database migration tooling (such as Liquibase, Flyway) and schema evolution in live environments.