About this role.
This Senior Software Engineer role on the Compute team at Temporal focuses on building managed compute primitives for Temporal Cloud, enabling transparent, elastic, and safe multi-cloud execution. Responsibilities include inventing autoscaling systems, designing cloud integrations, owning services on the hot path of task execution, and mentoring team members. The ideal candidate has significant experience in distributed systems, multi-tenant platforms, and production operations, with strong systems fundamentals. Go experience is a plus, but judgment and communication skills are paramount. The role offers the opportunity to shape core platform primitives in a fast-growing open-source company.
Role DNA
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Job Complexity
5/5Pace & Pressure
4/5Autonomy Level
4/5Communication Load
5/5Salary analysis
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Core skills
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Cover letter sample
Dear Hiring Manager,
I am excited to apply for the Senior Software Engineer, Compute position at Temporal. With over X years of experience building distributed systems and multi-tenant platforms, I am drawn to Temporal's mission of making durable execution accessible and reliable. In my previous role at [Company], I designed and operated autoscaling services that handled millions of requests per second, ensuring high availability and performance. I am particularly skilled in designing safe, observable, and elastic compute primitives that abstract infrastructure complexity from developers. I look forward to contributing to the Compute team's work on cloud integrations, autoscaling, and multi-tenant safety. Thank you for considering my application.
Sample interview questions
I built a custom autoscaler for a Kafka-based event processing platform that used metrics like lag and throughput. We implemented debouncing, backpressure, and gradual scaling to avoid thrashing, and added guardrails to cap scale-in rates. We also performed load testing and chaos experiments to ensure stability.
I would use a combination of resource quotas, rate limiting, and priority classes. Each tenant gets a dedicated namespace with CPU/memory limits enforced via cgroups. For fairness, we can implement weighted fair queuing and track usage over time. Additionally, we must secure data isolation through network policies and encryption.
In a real-time analytics system, we needed to choose between eventual consistency and strong consistency. We opted for a hybrid approach: critical operations used quorum-based reads, while non-critical ones allowed stale reads to reduce latency. We documented the tradeoffs and set clear SLOs for each operation type.
I advocate for structured logging, distributed tracing (e.g., OpenTelemetry), and metrics that capture both request-level and system-level details. We also implement health checks, dashboards, and alerts based on SLOs. For debugging, we ensure we can reproduce issues in staging with similar load patterns.
I lead by example through design reviews and code reviews, focusing on why certain choices are made. I pair with junior engineers on complex features, encouraging them to own parts of the work. I also run weekly knowledge-sharing sessions on system design and operational best practices.
About Us
Senior Software Engineer, Compute (Temporal Cloud)
Temporal powers durable execution for the world’s most demanding AI and enterprise systems. The Compute team at Temporal makes that durability feel effortless by building the managed compute primitives that run workers and other execution systems across Temporal Cloud.
We’re solving a hard platform problem: make compute transparent, elastic, safe-by-default, observable, and multi-cloud — without turning customers into infrastructure operators. We build platform primitives that span a variety of execution environments (e.g., serverless-style runtimes, containerized fleets, and customer-controlled deployments). Our work sits at the intersection of control plane + data plane: scaling decisions, isolation boundaries, multi-tenant safety, and production-grade observability. If you’ve built autoscaling systems, multi-tenant platforms, or cloud infrastructure, you’ll find a lot to love here.
See the “Compute team” link to read more –> Compute team – [new window opens]
As part of this role, you will:
Invent
- Create new managed compute primitives that feel first-class in Temporal Cloud: crisp abstractions, clean APIs, and an extension story across compute providers.
- Design self-optimizing autoscaling systems (signals, backstops, debouncing, guardrails) that scale worker fleets safely and predictably.
- Define the Open Source Server ↔ Cloud boundary for compute capabilities, keeping the architecture cohesive and maintainable.
Own
- Architect, build, and operate services on the hot path of task execution where performance and correctness are customer-visible.
- Deliver real-world cloud integrations (e.g., customer-account execution): IAM boundaries, secure credentials handling, networking constraints, quotas, and failure modes.
- Make operability a feature: SLOs, tracing/metrics, load and failure testing, incident reviews, and continuous hardening.
- Ship end-to-end: API design, rollout strategy, backwards compatibility, and long-term maintenance.
Teach
- Raise the bar through design docs, strong reviews, pragmatic technical leadership, and mentorship.
- Lead through influence across teams (Server, SDKs, Security, Control Plane) to land coherent platform changes.
What you bring
- Significant experience building distributed systems or multi-tenant platform services (design, implementation, and production operations).
- Strong systems fundamentals: concurrency, performance, reliability, and failure-mode thinking.
- A record of shipping platform primitives used by other engineers/customers (APIs, control planes, data planes).
- Comfort owning outcomes: SLOs, incident response, and improving on-call quality over time.
- Excellent written communication and crisp tradeoff thinking. (Go experience is a plus; judgment matters most.)
Nice to have
- Experience building cloud infrastructure platforms.
- Experience with IAM/security boundaries for cross-account execution models.
- Having built Kubernetes controllers / CRDs or heterogeneous worker fleet operations.
Compensation
- The estimated pay range for this role is $176,000 – $237,600.
- Additionally, this role is eligible to participate in Temporal’s equity plan.
- 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!
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.
- $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
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