# Staff Backend Engineer
**Company:** [Siftstack](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/siftstack)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA, Marina Del Rey, CA
**Salary:** $200K-$250K
**Experience:** 7+ years
**Skills:** Go, Rust, Python, SQL, Postgres, gRPC, Protobuf, Kubernetes, Prometheus, Argo Cd, Kafka, Flink, AWS, Docker, Linux
**Posted:** 2025-10-27
> Designs and builds scalable backend systems for real-time telemetry data ingestion, storage, and serving at massive scale. Requires 7+ years backend experience, distributed systems knowledge, Go/Rust/Python, SQL, and Kubernetes.
## Job Description
## Responsibilities
- Design, build, and operate backend systems that process and store large volumes of real-time telemetry data.
- Own features end-to-end, from design to post-launch improvement.
- Collaborate with Frontend, Design, and Data teams to ensure features solve real customer problems.
- Optimize backend systems for performance, scalability, and reliability.
- Contribute to system evolution—migrating services, introducing caches, and improving storage or indexing layers.
- Participate in on-call rotations, debugging live issues, and improving observability.
- Raise the bar through code reviews, shared patterns, and mentorship.

## Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, or another STEM discipline.
- 7+ years of experience in backend or infrastructure roles.
- Strong understanding of distributed systems fundamentals—state, fault tolerance, recovery.
- Experience with **Go**, **Rust**, or **Python**, and strong Linux/networking fundamentals.
- Deep knowledge of **SQL** and operational database experience (indexing, migrations, tuning).
- Experience building and scaling APIs (**REST**, **gRPC/Protobuf**).
- Strong debugging skills and a production-first mindset.
- Familiarity with **Kubernetes**, **Prometheus**, **Argo CD**, and other modern infrastructure tools.

## Nice-to-Haves
- Experience with streaming or time-series data systems (**Kafka**, **Flink**, **TimescaleDB**, etc.).
- Experience with performance tuning and profiling at query or service layers.
- Familiarity with observability tools (**Datadog**, **Grafana**).
- Background in hardware or telemetry-heavy environments.

## Compensation
- Salary range: **$200,000 - $250,000** per year, plus equity and benefits.

## Technologies
- Frontend & Backend: **Go**, **gRPC**, **PostgreSQL**, **Protobuf**, **React**, **TypeScript**.
- Data Infrastructure: **Apache Arrow**, **DataFusion**, **Flink**, **Kafka**, **Parquet**, **Rust**.
- Ops & Tooling: **AWS**, **Kubernetes**, **Docker**, **GitHub Actions**, **Prometheus**, **Argo CD**, **Grafana**, **Linux**.
**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/staff-backend-engineer-at-siftstack-e51c7cb6-5f7d-498b-a3f9-beea4c3e96aa
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/staff-backend-engineer-at-siftstack-e51c7cb6-5f7d-498b-a3f9-beea4c3e96aa