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Senior Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure

200k – 400kSan Francisco, CAData EngineeringOnsite5+ YOE
Summary

As a Senior Data Infrastructure Engineer, you will design, build, and operate data systems for Decagon's AI products, owning critical data pipelines and storage layers. You will improve reliability and performance, and enable engineers to work with data at scale.

About the role

About the Role

We're hiring a Senior Data Infrastructure Engineer to design, build, and operate the data systems that power Decagon's AI products. You'll own critical data pipelines and storage layers end-to-end, improve reliability and performance, and create paved paths that let every Decagon engineer work confidently with data at scale.

In this role, you will

  • Design and implement high-throughput data pipelines and streaming systems with strong SLOs, clear runbooks, and actionable telemetry.
  • Build and operate real-time and batch ingestion infrastructure using tools like Kafka, Flink, and Airflow.
  • Own our analytical data layer — schema design, query performance, and cost optimization across ClickHouse, BigQuery, or similar.
  • Partner with research and product teams to architect data solutions, evaluate performance, and scale new features.
  • Tune pipeline and query latencies: optimize data paths, apply smart caching/partitioning, and hit tight p95/p99 targets.
  • Lead infrastructure-as-code (Terraform) and GitOps practices for data systems; reduce drift with reusable modules and policy-as-code.
  • Participate in on-call and drive down toil through automation and elimination of recurring data issues.

Your background looks something like this

  • 5+ years building and operating production data infrastructure at scale.
  • Hands-on experience with Tier 1 data technologies: ClickHouse, Kafka (or MSK/Pub-Sub/RabbitMQ), and Flink or dbt.
  • Proven track record meeting high availability and low latency targets across streaming and batch workloads.
  • Excellent observability chops (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus/Grafana, Datadog) and strong incident response discipline.
  • Clear written communication and the ability to turn ambiguous data requirements into simple, reliable designs.

Even better if you have

  • Experience with CDC tooling (Debezium) and orchestration frameworks (Airflow, Dagster, or Prefect)
  • Familiarity with Spark or Dask for large-scale data processing
  • Experience with cloud data warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks)
  • Experience being an early data/platform/infrastructure engineer at another company
  • Strong Kubernetes experience (GKE/EKS/AKS) and multi-cloud exposure (GCP, AWS, Azure)
  • Experience with customer-managed deployments

Compensation

$200K – $400K + Offers Equity

This range reflects the expected compensation for this role. Compensation within the range is determined based on experience, skills, and the scope of responsibilities, with flexibility for candidates who demonstrate exceptional impact. In addition to base salary, we offer competitive equity. Final compensation may vary based on location within the United States.

Benefits

We proudly offer the following benefits for our full-time employees:

  • Take what you need vacation policy (subject to local requirements; UK employees receive 25 days of statutory leave)
  • Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits for you and your family
  • Life Insurance and Disability Benefits
  • Retirement Plan (e.g., 401K, pension)
  • Parental Leave
  • Fertility and family building benefits through Carrot
  • Daily lunches and snacks in the office to keep you at your best

These benefits are described in more detail in Decagon’s policies, may vary by location, and can change at any time according to applicable compensation and benefits plans.

Skills
KafkaFlinkAirflowClickHouseBigQueryTerraformOpenTelemetryPrometheusGrafanaDatadogDebeziumSparkdbtKubernetes
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