Senior Staff Software Engineer – Distributed Systems

Job Description

Senior Staff Software Engineer – Distributed Systems | [Your Company Name]

The Tone:
This is a full-time role at [Your Company Name], located remotely in North America or hybrid in San Francisco, CA. [Your Company Name] focuses on developing advanced products that address difficult challenges for businesses and consumers globally. The Senior Staff Software Engineer will be crucial in creating and maintaining the foundational infrastructure for our key services. This position offers a significant opportunity to guide technical strategy and directly impact the experience of millions of users.

The TL;DR
• Role: Full Time
• Location: Remote (North America) / Hybrid (San Francisco, CA)
• Team: Distributed Systems
• Mission: This role is responsible for designing, building, and maintaining core infrastructure for critical services, directly influencing the experience of millions of users.
• Tech Stack: Go, Java, Python, C++, AWS, GCP, Azure, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Cassandra, MongoDB, Redis, Docker, Kubernetes

What You’ll Actually Do
• Architect: Lead the design and architecture of highly scalable, available, and fault-tolerant distributed systems and microservices, influencing technical direction.
• Develop: Write high-quality, maintainable, and robust code in Go, Java, Python, or C++ to implement core system functionalities and infrastructure components.
• Optimize: Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks, optimize system resource utilization, and ensure low-latency operations for high-throughput services.
• Lead: Provide technical leadership and mentorship to other engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence through design and code reviews.
• Innovate: Stay informed of industry trends, research new technologies, and propose approaches to improve the platform.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Extensive background with 10+ years of professional software development, including at least 5 years focused on building and operating large-scale distributed systems, coupled with an expert understanding of data structures, algorithms, and software design principles.
• Experience: Proven experience with public cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure) and their managed services, along with strong experience across various database technologies including relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (Cassandra, MongoDB, Redis).
• Skills: Expert-level proficiency in at least one modern programming language (Go, Java, Python, C++), in-depth understanding of distributed systems concepts (consensus algorithms, consistency models, message queues), proven experience with Docker and Kubernetes, excellent communication, and demonstrated technical leadership.
• Bonus: Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science or a related field, experience with stream processing technologies (Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming), familiarity with observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry), contributions to open-source projects, or experience with specific technologies like gRPC, Envoy, or Istio.