Staff Software Engineer

Who you are

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, a related field or equivalent experience
• 8+ years of hands-on backend software engineering experience in large-scale distributed systems
• Experience building and/or managing core infrastructure systems at scale, preferably in online structured data storage, distributed databases, or large-scale data platforms
• Hands-on experience building and operating highly available, reliable, production-grade systems at scale, including incident response, capacity planning, schema/architecture evolution, and performance tuning
• Strong understanding of at least one of:
• Distributed SQL or NoSQL databases and their internals (e.g., sharding, replication, consensus, transaction processing), or
• Large-scale graph or relationship-oriented data stores and query patterns
• Experience working with or migrating to modern distributed storage/database technologies (experience with systems like TiDB or similar is a strong plus)
• Demonstrated technical leadership in setting roadmap and driving execution — including defining technical direction, leading engineering alignment, and partnering across teams to deliver complex platform investments
• Strong problem-solving skills and analytical mindset, with the ability to use data to guide decisions
• Experience coding in one of the following languages: Java, Python and/or C/C++
• Demonstrated experience leveraging AI to accelerate development, enhance operations, and improve customer support

What the job involves

• We're looking for an exceptional Staff Software Engineer to lead the technical strategy and execution of our storage infrastructure initiatives, defining how these systems are designed, built, and operated
• You'll drive innovation across distributed SQL, high-throughput/low-latency query processing, graph workloads, and the developer experience for storage clients
• Provide technical guidance and direction to a high-performing team building reliable, performant, and cost-efficient storage systems that operate at massive scale and power business-critical applications across the company
• Lead the architecture, design, and evolution of online structured storage services supporting both SQL/table-style and graph-style workloads over large-scale datasets
• Drive cross-functional strategic initiatives to modernize the storage tech stack—including transitioning datasets and workloads onto the TiDB backend—while advancing reliability, scalability, cost efficiency, and developer velocity
• Improve query throughput and latency across systems handling 100TB+ datasets and 1.5M+ queries per second, using rigorous measurement, experimentation, and performance engineering
• Use AI to accelerate system design and decision-making—prototyping approaches, exploring and comparing architectural options, and synthesizing findings—while applying judgment and verification to ensure correctness and quality
• Use AI to automate repeatable operational work (documentation, runbooks, reporting, and QA checks), freeing the team to focus on high-leverage engineering
• Serve on the Storage Services on-call rotation—monitoring, responding to alerts, diagnosing and resolving critical issues, and communicating status—and set the bar for technical excellence through strong design reviews, operational readiness, and blameless post-incident reviews
• Mentor senior engineers, developing the next generation of storage infrastructure leaders and technical experts