Senior Staff Software Engineer

Optimizely • Austin, TX

1d

About The Position

Optimizely Analytics is a warehouse-native analytics platform used by companies including Canva, Grammarly, and Capital One. The position is part of a small, nimble team that values fast delivery and gives engineers ownership and autonomy in product and design decisions. As a Senior Staff Engineer, you will lead the technical direction of the platform’s core systems, including its query compilation engine and custom NetScript DSL, and scale them to serve a rapidly growing customer base.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
• At least 10 years of software development experience, with strong foundations in data structures, algorithms, and distributed systems.
• At least 7 years of backend experience building, deploying, and operating large-scale distributed systems in production.
• Deep expertise in system design, API design, scalability, and performance tuning, with strong SQL proficiency and understanding of analytical query patterns.
• Proficiency in at least one modern backend programming language; Java is preferred.
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native architectures, containerization, orchestration, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience with query engines, compilers, interpreters, or domain-specific language design.
• Ability to influence architecture and technical strategy across multiple teams.
• A track record of mentoring engineers and scaling engineering organizations.
• Passion for fast-paced environments that involve wearing multiple hats and influencing both product and technology.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience as a staff or principal engineer, driving large cross-functional initiatives to completion with organization-wide technical influence.
• Experience building enterprise-grade analytics infrastructure or data platforms for high-volume, low-latency analytical workloads.
• Familiarity with warehouse-native architectures such as Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, or Databricks, and advanced SQL optimization techniques.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the architecture of the query compilation engine and NetScript DSL, ensuring they scale reliably and securely across diverse warehouse environments.
• Set engineering standards for code quality, query performance, system design, observability, and operational best practices.
• Collaborate with Product, UX, and Application Engineering teams to deliver impactful features while maintaining architectural soundness and scalability.
• Mentor and guide senior and mid-level engineers, supporting their technical growth and strengthening team capabilities.
• Anticipate and address complex challenges involving query optimization, SQL compilation, fault tolerance, and data-intensive analytical workloads.
• Influence product and platform direction, using technical insight in analytics and query languages to shape roadmap decisions and align backend systems with long-term business strategy.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior