Staff Software Engineer, Data

About this role

ABOUT SIFT

Sift is the data infrastructure platform for hardware engineering teams. Sift turns high-frequency telemetry into engineering insights for mission-critical systems. Teams use Sift to build and operate rockets, satellites, autonomous vehicles, energy systems, defense platforms, and more.

Founded by former SpaceX engineers who built the tools behind Dragon and Starlink, Sift is building the data infrastructure to herald the AI era for physical systems.

IN THIS ROLE, YOU'LL:

- Design and build a horizontally scalable platform for ingesting millions of hardware sensor data points per second

- Develop durable, efficient database solutions to support real-time reads and large-scale analytics workloads

- Pioneer data architecture by integrating recent innovations in streaming and storage, including cloud-native and diskless designs

- Help define engineering culture, standards, and processes

- Collaborate closely with peers on architecture, design, code reviews, and scaling strategies

THE SKILLSET YOU'LL BRING:

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, or another STEM discipline

- 7+ years of experience in backend, infrastructure, or data engineering roles

- Hands-on experience with event-time-based stream processing or streaming SQL systems using tools like Apache Flink, Kafka Streams, Beam, or similar

- Proficiency with relational and time-series databases like PostgreSQL, Druid, Pinot, TimescaleDB, or equivalent

- Experience with large-scale distributed systems or low-latency backend services, ideally written in Go, Rust, or Python

- Familiarity with DevOps and cloud infrastructure tools such as Kubernetes, Prometheus, ArgoCD, and Terraform

- Strong communication skills and a collaborative approach to problem-solving

BONUS POINTS:

- Familiarity with telemetry data from hardware systems, high-throughput ingest pipelines, or columnar storage formats like Apache Arrow and Parquet

- Experience building resilient, performant systems that scale to billions of records

- Curiosity about new data paradigms and eagerness to evaluate and integrate emerging tools and techniques

ENGINEERING AT SIFT:

You’ll join a tight-knit team of world-class engineers building foundational systems for next-gen machines. Technologies you'll work with may include:

- Frontend & Backend: Go, gRPC, PostgreSQL, Protobuf, React, TypeScript

- Data Infrastructure: Apache Arrow, DataFusion, Flink, Kafka, Parquet, Rust

- Ops & Tooling: AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, GitHub Actions, Prometheus, Argo CD, Grafana, Linux

LOCATION:

Sift’s headquarters is in Marina Del Rey, CA (Next to LAX). We collaborate in person twice a week—on Mondays and Thursdays—and come together for a full week every two months. We are open to relocating candidates to LA or working from our San Francisco office for the right candidate.

Salary range: $200,000 - $250,000 per year. Plus equity and benefits.

ELIGIBILITY:

U.S. Person Required: Must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual such as an asylee or refugee in compliance with ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) / EAR (Export Administration Regulations) regulations.

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