Staff Software Engineer, Metadata

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and delivery of complex, team-level projects across Metadata services, coordinating development across multiple engineers.
• Design and develop architectures for new subsystems and own team-level subsystems end to end.
• Use AI tooling and agents across development and SDLC artifacts, including TDDs, PRDs, post-mortems, and test plans.
• Review and approve technical designs, identifying deficiencies before release.
• Drive technical initiatives across discovery API, catalog, lineage, and run history systems.
• Establish and uphold design, architecture, and coding best practices.
• Coach and mentor engineers and improve code quality through reviews and guidance.
• Write technical specifications, document common components, and maintain project documentation.
• Optimize critical code, follow up on incidents, and improve service reliability and performance.
• Participate periodically in the on-call rotation.

Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including leadership of complex, team-scope technical work.
• Deep expertise designing and owning subsystems in distributed, cloud-based systems.
• Ability to set technical direction and drive multi-engineer initiatives.
• Excellent design and architecture judgment, including evaluating trade-offs and identifying design flaws.
• Strong coding, testing, estimation, and delivery skills.
• Track record of improving quality through code review, peer coaching, and engineering practices.
• Experience partnering with QE on test strategy and owning incidents, post-mortems, reliability, and performance.
• Proficiency in a modern backend or systems language such as Python, Java, C++, or C#.
• Experience with cloud platforms, containerization, and development infrastructure.
• Fluency with AI code assistants, coding agents, and conversational AI for SDLC artifacts.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience with ETL, ELT, or cloud-based data platforms.
• Experience architecting metadata, catalog, lineage, or discovery/search systems.
• Experience with GraphQL APIs and high-throughput, multi-tenant data services.
• Familiarity with analytics engineering and the dbt ecosystem.

Compensation and Benefits

• Oakland pay range: $162,157.50–$198,877.25 USD.
• 100% employer-paid medical insurance.
• Paid time off, sick time, parental leave, holidays, and volunteer days.
• RSU stock grants.
• Professional development and training opportunities.
• Virtual events, free food, and team-building activities.
• Monthly cell phone stipend.
• Mental health support platform with therapy, coaching, and mindfulness resources.