Senior Software Engineer, Core SQL

Redpanda Data • Canada, KY

6h • $200,000 - $260,000 • Remote

About The Position

We are expanding our Core Engineering team at Redpanda to build Oxla - a distributed SQL engine that enables exceptionally fast analytical operations with significantly lower infrastructure cost compared to existing alternatives. Oxla empowers companies to run complex SQL queries directly on massive datasets and streaming data without the complexity of traditional data pipelines. Oxla uniquely combines real-time stream processing with high-performance analytics, allowing organizations to query both historical data and live Redpanda streams through a unified SQL interface.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of relevant professional experience working on performance-critical systems
• Expert-level knowledge of modern C++ (ideally C++17 or C++20), including STL, memory management, and performance-oriented programming patterns
• Strong algorithmic foundation with proven ability to design and optimize complex data- processing algorithms
• Hands-on experience profiling, benchmarking, and performance tuning of production systems in Linux environments
• Deep understanding of parallel computing and concurrent programming, multi-threaded architectures, and synchronization primitives, along with familiarity with CPU architecture (cache hierarchies, memory bandwidth, branch prediction, instruction-level parallelism)
• Experience working on deeply technical systems involving scalability, concurrency, parallelism, and correctness
• Passion for building scalable, high-performance systems through systematic profiling, benchmarking and iterative optimization
• Pride in writing robust, well-abstracted code and a collaborative mindset that values feedback and code reviews
• Experience or interest in working with a fully distributed engineering team and contributing in open-source environments
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Nice To Haves

• C++ 20 experience
• Hands-on SIMD programming experience (e.g., AVX2, AVX-512, NEON, or similar)
• Familiarity with Apache Arrow, Parquet, or other columnar data formats
• Knowledge of SQL query optimization including cost-based optimization and execution strategies
• Experience with distributed database systems, distributed storage, and containerized deployment (Docker/Kubernetes)
• Python experience for testing frameworks, benchmarking tooling, or database client integrations

Responsibilities

• Work closely with engineers who care deeply about their craft, take pride in what they deliver, and uphold a strong culture of technical excellence through thoughtful code reviews and collaboration
• Design, implement, and optimize high-performance SQL query execution algorithms and distributed SQL engine components using advanced optimization techniques (SIMD, cache-aware data structures, vectorization, structure-of-arrays layouts)
• Help ensure Redpanda's core tenets of Operational Simplicity, No Data Loss, and Blazingly Fast performance remains true as we scale analytical data workloads
• Measure, profile, and optimize code to achieve industry-leading query performance across diverse hardware architectures
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, designers, SREs, support, and customer success to solve challenging distributed systems problems
• Drive delivery of an ambitious technical roadmap aligned with business goals for integrating high-performance analytics into Redpanda's data streaming platform
• Write comprehensive tests and documentation to ensure code quality, long-term maintainability, and knowledge sharing across the team
• Help shape Redpanda’s future while continuing to learn and grow as an engineer

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed