Staff Platform Engineer (Databases & Storage)

Responsibilities

• Own the design and evolution of the transactional systems that power the platform
• Define architecture for database and storage systems under high-throughput, low-latency workloads
• Make and drive decisions around data modeling, indexing, replication, and consistency
• Debug and resolve complex production issues, including contention, replication behavior, and performance bottlenecks
• Establish standards for reliability, observability, and operability across the platform
• Partner with product and research teams to support evolving and often ambiguous requirements
• Drive improvements in performance, scalability, and cost across the system
• Mentor engineers and raise the bar for system design and technical decision-making

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience building and operating production systems at scale, with ownership of critical infrastructure
• Strong experience designing and operating transactional systems and databases (Spanner, Postgres, MySQL, or similar)
• Deep understanding of data modeling, indexing, transactions, concurrency, and consistency tradeoffs
• Experience owning systems with strict reliability and performance requirements in production
• Strong experience debugging complex production issues and reasoning about failure modes
• Experience designing distributed systems or large-scale infrastructure where tradeoffs are non-trivial
• Proven ability to define architecture and drive technical decisions end-to-end
• Strong judgment in balancing performance, reliability, and cost
• Ability to operate effectively in ambiguous, fast-moving environments with high ownership

Preferred

• Experience with database internals, storage systems, or query engines
• Experience building infrastructure for AI/ML systems or data platforms
• Experience in early-stage or high-growth environments