Staff Software Engineer – Escalation Resolution

Business Area:

Support

Seniority Level:

Mid-Senior level

Job Description: 

At Cloudera, we empower people to transform complex data into clear and actionable insights. With as much data under management as the hyperscalers, we’re the preferred data partner for the top companies in almost every industry. Powered by the relentless innovation of the open source community, Cloudera advances digital transformation for the world’s largest enterprises.

The Escalation Resolution Engineer (ERE) team is a specialized engineering-focused team within Support, dedicated to issue resolution for critical customer engineering escalations in Cloudera’s Cloudera Manager.

This team operates as the first line of engineering escalation, proactively resolving complex issues without escalating to Product Engineering, thus improving the overall customer experience and reducing dependency on Product Engineering. EREs will proactively work to prevent future escalations by identifying patterns, knowledge gaps, enablement opportunities, and process improvements to enhance overall support efficiency and customer experience. EREs will proactively work to prevent future escalations by identifying patterns, knowledge gaps, enablement opportunities, and process improvements to enhance overall support efficiency and customer experience.

The ideal candidate is an engineer with strong interpersonal skills, who can collaborate cross-functionally, perform deep troubleshooting analysis, provide transparent updates to Support, and actively contribute to customer success. They should be comfortable working on complex deployment scenarios, configuration systems, and networking/OS-level issues, digging deep into technical problems, and identifying patterns to drive long-term improvements.

If you enjoy troubleshooting complex distributed systems, engaging with customers, and solving real-world technical challenges, this is the role for you.

As a Staff Software Engineer – Escalation Resolution You will:

• Act as the primary point of engineering escalation contact to debug, troubleshoot, and resolve highly complex issues across CM Agents, cluster configuration, database, Kerberos, TLS/SSL setup, and underlying OS/network interactions.

• Work closely with frontline Support teams to provide real-time guidance and improve case resolution efficiency.

• Identify recurring case patterns and provide enablement sessions to Support to reduce unnecessary engineering escalations.

• Contribute to the Apache open-source project by reporting defects based on escalations and occasionally contributing patches.

• Conduct training sessions to improve Support engineers’ troubleshooting capabilities.

• Identify opportunities for product enhancements to reduce recurring customer issues.

• The team provides business hours coverage (Monday to Friday) to ensure continuous support across time zones. Weekend coverage will be done on a rotation basis to support critical escalations.

We are excited if you have:

• Bsc/Msc in related field or equivalent experience.

• 8+ years of industry experience building software in a large-scale production environment.

• Solid understanding of distributed systems, database, networks and the web (JSON, RESTful web services, and client-server interactions).

• Proven proficiency in Java and excellent issue reproduction and debugging skills.

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills—able to collaborate across teams and provide clear updates.

• Ability to engage with customers on technical topics and explain solutions clearly.

• Experience with Java, Python, Hibernate / Spring. 

• Proficient knowledge of JVM, multi-threading, and GC internals.

• Experience with performance troubleshooting.

• Java Security – certificate management, encryption, TLS

You may also have:

• Prior experience in Software Development, Support Engineering, Escalations, or Site Reliability Engineering (SRE).

• Experience working in high-touch, customer-facing environments handling enterprise-scale support cases.

• Go, CXF, or Swagger

• Good experience with MySQL or any relational database.

• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.

What you can expect from us:

• Generous PTO Policy 

• Support work life balance with Unplugged Days

• Flexible WFH Policy 

• Mental & Physical Wellness programs 

• Phone and Internet Reimbursement program 

• Access to Continued Career Development 

• Comprehensive Benefits and Competitive Packages 

• Paid Volunteer Time

• Employee Resource Groups

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