Staff Software Engineer

Starburst•San Francisco, CA

6h•$190,000 - $250,000•Onsite

About The Position

Starburst is the data platform for analytics, applications, and AI, unifying data across clouds and on-premises to accelerate AI innovation. Organizations—from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises in 60+ countries—rely on Starburst for fast data access, seamless collaboration, and enterprise-grade governance on an open hybrid data lakehouse. Wherever data lives, Starburst unlocks its full potential, powering data and AI from development to deployment. By future-proofing data architecture, Starburst helps businesses fuel innovation with AI. Starburst is looking for an experienced Staff Software Engineer to sit at the intersection of software engineering and data engineering — building the internal platforms, pipelines, and data products that power how we understand our customers and our business. You'll work across Starburst Enterprise and Starburst Galaxy, using our own technology to solve real problems at scale, while also contributing software that other teams depend on. Because data engineers are one of our primary target personas, you'll bring a uniquely valuable perspective: you'll use our products daily and feed that experience directly back into how we build and improve them. You'll work closely with a dynamic, talented, globally distributed team, writing production-quality software alongside building reliable data systems — with a consistent emphasis on quality, maintainability, and speed to insight.

Requirements

A Trino enthusiast looking to push the bounds in an AI future
At least 7 years of combined experience in software engineering and/or data engineering, with genuine depth in both
Strong software engineering fundamentals: writing clean, testable, well-reviewed code in Java, Python, or Scala
Experience building and optimizing data pipelines using Trino, Spark, dbt, and related frameworks
Experience designing and building backend services, APIs, and data platform components
Experience managing data and application infrastructure in public clouds, particularly AWS (EMR, EC2, S3, IAM)
Experience using and managing orchestration frameworks such as Apache Airflow or Dagster
Knowledge of RAG and other design patterns for AI-powered applications
Fluency in SQL and comfort moving between SQL and general-purpose programming as the task demands
Experience building API integrations for extracting data from third-party sources
Knowledge of data modeling techniques appropriate for modern data lakes
Proficiency with Configuration-as-Code and Infrastructure-as-Code tools such as Pulumi, Terraform, and/or Ansible
A track record of shipping reliable software and data systems on time, with disciplined practices around testing, code quality, and review
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the organizational ability to coordinate across teams

Nice To Haves

multi-cloud experience (GCP/Azure) is a plus

Responsibilities

Design, build, and operate a high-quality data lake and the software systems that feed it, supporting product management, finance, customer support, and engineering
Write production-grade software — services, APIs, tooling, and automation — that enables data workflows and integrations at scale
Find innovative ways to use Trino and Starburst to solve complex data management and software architecture challenges
Collaborate with technical leads, product managers, and data analysts to build robust data products and analytics
Leverage AI to democratize access to datasets for users throughout Starburst, including building and maintaining the software infrastructure that makes this possible
Enable dataset preparation and model evaluation for Starburst's AI projects
Define and evolve engineering processes and best practices that span both software and data domains, with a focus on reliability and actionable results
Work closely with leaders across teams to iterate on data architecture and the software systems that implement it, keeping quality high at every layer
Identify emerging patterns in data management and software engineering, and work with Starburst's product teams to bring those innovations to market