Senior Software Engineer, Event Streaming Systems

Senior Software Engineer, Event Streaming Systems Overview

This role sits within Deliveroo’s engineering organisation and focuses on the event streaming infrastructure that supports essential workflows across Deliveroo, DoorDash, and Wolt. The team works on systems that must be highly dependable, scalable, and efficient because they underpin Tier-0 production workloads and help other engineering teams build reliable event-driven products at scale. The position is based in London at The River Building HQ and follows a hybrid working arrangement.

Deliveroo is looking for a senior engineer who can help design, operate, and improve the streaming platform that powers business-critical services. The work is centered on Kafka, Deliveroo’s internal event streaming abstraction called EventBus, and future platform technologies. This is a hands-on infrastructure role with a strong operational component, and it involves both building new capabilities and keeping existing systems healthy in production.

What you will do

• Design, implement, and operate event streaming infrastructure that supports critical production workloads at large scale.
• Strengthen the reliability, scalability, monitoring, and automation of Kafka, EventBus, and related streaming systems.
• Investigate and fix complex issues in distributed systems, including performance degradation, capacity pressure, and live service reliability problems.
• Create automation and self-healing mechanisms that reduce manual intervention and improve the resilience of the platform.
• Participate in incident response, operational readiness activities, and continuous improvement work for infrastructure that is considered Tier-0.
• Work closely with colleagues in EventBus, Storage, SRE, Data Platform, and Core Infrastructure teams across both US and EU time zones.
• Help define the long-term technical direction and architecture of Deliveroo’s event streaming ecosystem.
• Support the infrastructure that enables important workflows across Deliveroo, DoorDash, and Wolt.

What the team is looking for

• Substantial practical experience building or running distributed systems in a live production setting.
• Experience working with Kafka or another event streaming system, either as a platform owner, infrastructure engineer, or someone responsible for a critical production dependency.
• Strong software engineering ability in Java, Go, Python, or a similar language, with an emphasis on writing reliable and maintainable code for production use.
• Experience operating production infrastructure at scale, including diagnosing issues, troubleshooting failures, and improving service reliability.
• Good understanding of infrastructure automation, observability, capacity management, and operational excellence.
• Working knowledge of Linux, networking, and JVM-based systems, or a willingness to build deeper expertise in those areas.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across platform, infrastructure, and product engineering teams.
• Additional experience that would be helpful includes contributing to Kafka or other open-source distributed systems.
• Familiarity with streaming technologies such as Redpanda, WarpStream, AutoMQ, Pulsar, or similar tools is considered a plus.
• Experience with JVM tuning, broker tuning, partition management, or Cruise Control would be advantageous.
• Exposure to tiered storage, diskless streaming architectures, or multi-region streaming platforms would also be valuable.
• Experience running Tier-0 infrastructure at very large scale is another strong advantage.

Why Deliveroo

Deliveroo describes itself as a fast-moving marketplace where engineering work has real-world impact. The company says the role offers the chance to solve meaningful problems at scale, ship improvements quickly in a low-hierarchy environment, and take ownership of large, ambiguous technical challenges with strong support around you. The culture is presented as one for builders, with high standards, collaboration, flexible working, and continuous learning.

The company also highlights that employees can share in the success they help create through competitive pay and equity opportunities. Deliveroo encourages candidates to explore its engineering blog and interview guide for a deeper understanding of how the team works and what to expect during the hiring process.

Compensation and perks

• Competitive pay tailored to the role and location.
• Equity awards may be available for some roles.
• Depending on the role and location, employees may also be eligible for an annual bonus, a sign-on bonus, or relocation support.
• Employer pension contributions of up to 5%.
• Free Deliveroo Plus membership, including free delivery and special offers.
• Team lunches from well-regarded local restaurants.
• 25 days of annual leave plus bank holidays, with additional holiday entitlement increasing with tenure.
• One paid day each year to volunteer for a registered charity.
• Healthcare coverage for single cover on the core plan, with family cover available at the employee’s own cost.
• On-site gym access at headquarters and discounted membership at external gyms.
• Access to wellbeing and fitness apps through GymPass, including options such as LesMills+, Strava, Headspace, and Yogaia.
• Discounted dental insurance and other flexible benefits, including critical illness cover, partner life cover, travel insurance, and health assessments.
• Life assurance.
• Parental leave policies covering maternity, paternity, maternity shared parental leave, with eligibility from day one.
• Equipment and support for working from home.
• A working culture that is supportive of parents.
• Free mortgage advice.
• Cycle to Work Scheme or Season Ticket Loans, depending on how the employee travels.
• Access to learning and development resources through RooLearn.
• Regular social activities led by employee resource groups, including dinners, dance classes, and in-office yoga sessions.
• Summer and end-of-year company celebrations.

Hiring process and inclusion

Deliveroo says it aims to run a fair recruitment process that allows candidates to show their skills clearly. The interview process for this role typically has three to four stages. The company also points candidates to its engineering interview guide for preparation.

Deliveroo states that it values diversity, equity, and inclusion, and that it wants a workplace that reflects the wider world. It welcomes applicants from all backgrounds and says it is committed to equal opportunity regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion, or belief. Candidates who have a disability or long-term health condition can request support or reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process after submitting an application.

The company also notes that, as part of Deliveroo’s wider global structure, it is now part of DoorDash, which means some roles may involve collaboration with teams, systems, and leaders across DoorDash and Wolt.

Applicants are invited to apply online through the careers site.

Degree Requirement: Not Specified

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