Staff Software Engineer, Nexus SDK

SUMMARY

As a Senior Language Runtime Engineer, you will build and evolve the Nexus interfaces for the Temporal SDKs—the primary way developers interact with Temporal. Nexus is Temporal’s durable execution framework for orchestrating work across team and application boundaries—providing improved modularity, security, debuggability, and fault isolation. Building Nexus into each SDK is a deep engineering challenge: these are not thin clients but full-fledged runtime environments that execute user workflows, manage durable state transitions, and coordinate closely with the Temporal Server.

You will design and implement Nexus APIs and runtime behaviors across multiple languages, ensuring developers can easily compose, invoke, and integrate durable workflows using clear, idiomatic interfaces. We are looking for someone that loves programming languages and is a strong polyglot with deep domain expertise in at least 2 of the the following languages Python, TypeScript, .NET, Ruby, and Rust. This role will be central in delivering new Nexus-powered features such as advanced durable execution patterns, async processing, and support for invoking workflows via industry-standard protocols.

Most of this work is open source—explore it at https://github.com/temporalio [New window opens] —and you’ll collaborate closely with other SDK engineers to deliver a unified, delightful experience for our polyglot developer community.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Take end-to-end ownership of new features, working with others in the Nexus and OSS teams to deliver exceptional reliability and a great developer experience.
• Design and build Nexus interfaces for the Temporal SDKs used by customers to work with Temporal in their programming language of choice.
• Tightly integrate Temporal SDKs with their respective languages, making best use of type systems and language runtimes, to execute application code in a durable, deterministic way.
• Develop features that provide a foundation for the reliable execution of the current wave of agentic AI systems. Be a part of the fundamentals, instead of a part of the trend!
• Work directly with our community to debug issues that need expert attention, and get feedback on Temporal SDK features and APIs.
• Write publicly-readable technical documentation describing Temporal concepts and APIs.
• Travel to meet your coworkers for a week once or twice a year.

What You Won’t Do

• Work in an office (unless you want to, but you’d be by yourself). Temporal is a fully-remote company.
• Commit code that’s poorly-tested or works “most of the time”. Temporal aspires to be “Reliable as Gravity”, and we expect your code to be the same.
• Work behind closed doors. The SDKs are open source—that means PRs and comments are open to the public, too.
• Sit in meetings all day. We mostly communicate in writing, and use meetings mainly for status updates and thorny issues that need input from the whole group.

WHAT YOU'LL BRING

• At least 7 years of experience in a production environment as an "Arranger" and/or "Builder/Enhancer" of highly scalable distributed systems. see HERE https://temporalio.notion.site/Distributed-Systems-Concurrency-2526e6dfce4947d39fd3a40f9f07652a for more info re: "Arranger" and/or "Builder/Enhancer"
• Solid computer science fundamentals in distributed systems concepts including multi-threading and concurrency.
• Experience writing concurrent code in production with languages like Go, Java, Python, Typescript, .NET or other applicable languages with skill level as "high end of Intermediate" and/or "Advanced" or "Expert" levels. see HERE https://temporalio.notion.site/Distributed-Systems-Concurrency-2526e6dfce4947d39fd3a40f9f07652a for more info re: "high end of Intermediate" and/or "Advanced" or "Expert levels"
• Experience designing APIs, SDK libraries or working with Open Source Systems.

COMPENSATION

• The estimated pay range for this role is $176,000 - $237,000 depending on experience and location.
• Additionally, this role is eligible to participate in Temporal's equity plan.