Staff Software Engineer, Infrastructure

Numero • ,

1d • $200,000 - $240,000 • Remote

About The Position

Numero is seeking experienced engineers to scale and harden the data infrastructure that powers their platform for political campaigns and nonprofits. This staff-level role involves owning the data infrastructure end-to-end, focusing on the performance, reliability, and scalability of large production databases that handle millions of requests daily and billions of records. The engineer will define the direction for sharding, querying, observing, and automating data systems with significant autonomy. The role is crucial as the infrastructure is the foundation for all other services at Numero, impacting clients during high-traffic moments like election cycles.

Requirements

• Deep experience operating data infrastructure at scale (preferred 8+ years, with significant time responsible for performance and reliability of large production databases).
• Expert-level relational databases at scale (e.g., Postgres, MySQL), including query plans, indexing, locking, replication, connection pooling, and failure modes under load.
• Experience with partitioning, sharding, or other horizontal-scaling approaches.
• Experience operating systems like OpenSearch (or Elasticsearch) and document databases like MongoDB at scale.
• Strong instincts for workload distribution across different data stores.
• Obsession with query optimization, using tools like pganalyze and Sentry to identify and fix performance degradation.
• Automation-first, DevOps mindset, preferring to automate repetitive tasks.
• Judgment and influence of a staff engineer, capable of setting technical direction and driving initiatives independently.
• Pragmatic, incremental approach to change, with experience leading migrations without disruption.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and high EQ.
• Located in the continental USA (ET, CT, MT, PT).
• Willingness to travel 1-2x a year for company retreats and/or team offsites.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience with the specific tech stack (Ruby on Rails, TypeScript, React, Postgres on PlanetScale, MongoDB, OpenSearch, Redis, Sentry, pganalyze) is a plus, but deep engineering capability is prioritized.

Responsibilities

• Own data infrastructure end to end.
• Lead the direction for sharding, querying, observing, and automating data systems.
• Ensure databases are fast, reliable, and ready to scale.
• Improve data ingestion and matching pipelines, including entity resolution across millions of records.
• Scale and maintain Postgres databases on PlanetScale, focusing on partitioning, indexing, and relieving hotspots.
• Lead the sharding strategy for Postgres, including data modeling for complex partitions.
• Manage the day-to-day health and performance of Postgres databases, including connection pooling, archival, and routine maintenance.
• Own the deployment and operation of services, leading migrations across hosting providers (Heroku, Render, AWS) with minimal disruption.
• Optimize and automate infrastructure operations using AI tools for tasks like migrations, monitoring, and incident triage.
• Proactively triage and diagnose systems to identify and address potential problems.
• Set technical direction, raise the bar for the team, and drive cross-cutting infrastructure work.
• Apply a pragmatic, incremental approach to change and lead migrations without disrupting daily work.
• Collaborate effectively with team members, demonstrating excellent communication and high EQ.

Benefits

• Base salary in the range of $200,000 - $240,000.
• Equity.
• Merit-based annual bonus that scales with company performance.
• Flexible PTO (including 12 company holidays and 2 weeks of required PTO each year).
• 401K Plan with employer match.
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage with HSA option (50% coverage for dependents).
• Paid Parental Leave for primary and secondary caregivers.
• Choice of premium tech setup (laptop, monitor, accessories, headphones).
• $1,000 for work-from-home setup.
• Annual company retreat and/or team offsites.
• Professional development support (courses, certifications, training).

What This Job Offers

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