Staff Software Engineer

Description

Be Part of Building the Future

The company is the unified lakehouse platform for self-service analytics and AI, serving hundreds of global enterprises, including Maersk, Amazon, Regeneron, NetApp, and S&P Global. Customers rely on the company for cloud, hybrid, and on-prem lakehouses to power their data mesh, data warehouse migration, data virtualization, and unified data access use cases. Based on open source technologies, including Apache Iceberg and Apache Arrow, the company provides an open lakehouse architecture enabling the fastest time to insight and platform flexibility at a fraction of the cost. Learn more at the company's site.

About the role

The company's Connectivity team builds the high-performance connectivity solutions that help customers bring data to the company and connect the company to the broader data ecosystem. The team works across client drivers, protocols, connectors, interoperability, distributed systems, and the reliability and supportability of production data access.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll independently own multiple medium-to-large features or service components within a Connectivity and Clients area. You'll define the approach for a substantial team-area scope, turn ambiguous goals into clear milestones, make sound feature and service-level design decisions, and drive work through reliable production delivery. You will bring deep expertise in at least one area, such as JDBC or ODBC drivers, Apache Arrow ADBC, Arrow Flight SQL, BI interoperability, source connectivity, or connectivity reliability, while contributing effectively across adjacent areas. You will also mentor engineers and influence partner teams through strong technical judgment and execution.

What you'll be doing

Own substantial connectivity work: Lead multiple medium-to-large features or service components from problem definition through design, implementation, validation, release readiness, and operational handoff.

Turn ambiguity into an execution plan: Define reviewable milestones, acceptance measures, dependencies, estimates, and risks for complex customer, product, and engineering goals.

Design scalable, maintainable systems: Produce technical designs and architecture diagrams, explain trade-offs, and make feature and service-level decisions across drivers, protocols, client libraries, connectors, and distributed services.

Diagnose complex failures: Lead root-cause analysis across client/server, protocol, network, authentication, metadata, and distributed-system boundaries using logs, telemetry, profiles, benchmarks, and production evidence.

Build compatibility and reliability: Maintain API and protocol stability; create automated compatibility, interoperability, performance, scale, reliability, observability, and diagnostics coverage; and define practical migration paths for supported and legacy clients.

Collaborate and influence: Partner with Product, Query Execution, QA, Support, SRE, Documentation, and external technology partners to resolve dependencies and improve certification, customer experience, and supportability.

Raise the engineering bar: Participate actively in code and design reviews, mentor and coach engineers, improve team practices, and contribute to relevant upstream open-source projects when aligned with the company priorities.

Use AI-assisted development tools responsibly: Apply the company-approved AI tools to code comprehension, debugging, test generation, and documentation while protecting proprietary and customer data and validating results through review, testing, and sound engineering judgment.

Requirements

• Staff-level ownership: 8+ years of production software engineering experience, or equivalent depth demonstrated through sustained ownership of complex systems and multiple substantial team-area features.
• Programming expertise: Deep proficiency in Java, C++, Rust, Go, or another systems or services language, with the ability to work effectively in adjacent languages and frameworks.
• Connectivity and systems depth: Experience designing and debugging APIs, protocols, client libraries, drivers, or distributed services, with strong knowledge of data structures, concurrency, asynchronous programming, networking, and failure handling.
• Problem-solving ability: Able to identify and solve non-obvious problems across client/server and distributed-system boundaries and turn findings into durable fixes and regression coverage.
• Quality mindset: Experience building comprehensive unit, integration, compatibility, performance, or reliability tests and working with production CI/CD, packaging, release, certification, and engineering quality controls.
• Communication and influence: Clear written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain technical trade-offs, surface risks early, align contributors across teams, and influence without formal authority.
• Mentorship: Demonstrated ability to mentor and coach engineers and improve the effectiveness and engineering practices of the team around you.
• Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. Advanced degrees and equivalent industry experience are welcomed.
• Bonus points if you have
• Experience developing JDBC, ODBC, ADBC, or other database drivers.
• Experience with Apache Arrow or Arrow Flight SQL.
• Experience with SQL engines, databases, data platforms, or source connectors.
• BI interoperability experience with Power BI, Tableau, Excel, or similar tools, including collaboration with partner engineering teams.
• Knowledge of OAuth, OIDC, TLS, enterprise authentication, metadata discovery, or query pushdown.
• Cross-platform native build, packaging, release engineering, compatibility certification, or upgrade support experience.
• Observability, production diagnostics, customer escalation, long-running data transfer, cancellation, keepalive, timeout, or proxy experience.
• Contributions to Apache Arrow or other relevant open-source projects.
• What we value
• At the company, we hold ourselves to high standards when it comes to People, Thinking, and Action. Our Gnarlies (that's what we call our employees) communicate with clarity, drive accountability, and are respectful towards each other. We confront brutal facts and focus on results while operating with a sense of urgency and building a "flywheel". People who like to jump in and drive momentum will thrive in our GnarlyLife.
• The company is committed to providing any necessary accommodations for individuals with disabilities within our application and interview process. To request accommodation due to a disability, please inform your recruiter.
• Important Security Notice for Candidates
• At the company, we uphold trust and transparency as paramount values in all our interactions with customers, partners, employees, and the general public. We have been targeted by individuals creating fake domains similar to ours to scam prospects and candidates. Please note that all official communications from us will be from an @the company's site domain. If you suspect you've been targeted by a scam, it's imperative to report the incident to your local law enforcement agencies. For more information about this type of scam, please refer to the company's official statement here .