Senior Software Engineer (Build)

• As a Software Engineer on this team, you’ll help design and build this foundation and the applications around it
• You’ll work on some of the hardest and most exciting challenges in data—search, information retrieval, and AI for data pracitioners—while collaborating with a small, highly skilled team that values velocity, creativity, and impact
• This role sits at the intersection of applied research, software engineering, and product: we think it takes someone who can work across the stack to build, release, and scale products successfully in this space
• Shape the future of AI for data engineering - build intelligent systems that understand, reason about, and optimize the flow of data across entire organizations
• Design and engineer the brain of Astronomer’s context layer, crafting components that power data modeling, semantic search, retrieval, and code generation
• Push the boundaries of applied AI - experiment with LLMs, embeddings, and cutting-edge retrieval techniques to create developer tools that deliver insights to you and our customers
• Turn research into reality - work side by side with R&D and product teams to bring early AI concepts to life in the product experience
• Solve high-impact information retrieval and search challenges at a global scale, leveraging Astronomer’s unparalleled visibility into data pipelines across industries
• Influence the technical vision and architecture for the next generation of AI-driven data products
• Represent Astronomer in the community - through open-source contributions, technical talks, and publications that showcase our leadership in AI and data innovation

Benefits

• Remote friendly, work from anywhere
• If you’re in a city with an office, it’s there (and stocked with snacks) when you need it
• Co-workers in over 40 states and 15 countries around the world
• Health, dental, and vision insurance at little to no cost for individuals, and at competitive rates for your dependents
• Disability and life insurance policies in case something happens
• Unlimited vacation - we do track vacation days and actively encourage people to take it (on average, Astronomers take 20 days of vacation per year)
• Parental leave
• Laptop of your choice, and a stipend to help with your work-from-home setup
• Monthly $170 pre-tax stipend intended to cover your cellphone and WiFi bills
• Yearly internal summit for all employees
• Regular access to conferences, workshops, and meetups in the ecosystem- Strong collaboration and communication skills—you can explain complex systems clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences
• A creative, experimental mindset: you enjoy exploring uncharted areas, validating hypotheses, and learning through iteration
• Empathy for users, and a deep interest in improving the workflows of data professionals
• Familiarity with early-stage product development; comfortable working with ambiguity in a fast-changing field
• Experience with LLMs, vector databases, embeddings, or other applied AI areas—or a strong desire to dive in
• A collaborative approach and comfort working in an evolving, research-driven environment where ideas move quickly
• 5-8 years of software engineering experience with Python or Go
• Experience building out agentic systems on top of frontier models
• Exposure to early-stage startups or R&D organizations where ambiguity is the norm
• Experience in search, IR, or large-scale data infrastructure
• Demonstrated contributions to open source projects
• Familiarity with Apache Airflow or other orchestration tools
• A passion for AI systems for data, developer tools, or machine learning infrastructure