Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Data Systems

📋 Description

• • This is a Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Data Systems role at a seed-stage AI-native enterprise analytics startup based in New York City.
• • The company is building an agentic data lakehouse — a next-generation data platform designed to turn messy enterprise data into trustworthy, queryable answers at scale.
• • Backed by notable institutional investors and serving large-scale enterprise customers across healthcare, financial services, and Fortune 100 companies, the team is roughly 40 people and growing fast.
• • You'll join at a pivotal moment to work on a greenfield OLAP lakehouse project — building foundational data infrastructure for the agentic era, where autonomous agents will drive the vast majority of queries.
• • If you find yourself genuinely excited by JOIN order optimization or have ever implemented a query optimizer for fun, this role was written for you.
• • Visa sponsorship is available.
• • Design and build core components of a greenfield distributed OLAP lakehouse platform from the ground up.
• • Drive query performance improvements, including join optimization and query execution strategies suited to agent-driven workloads.
• • Collaborate across infrastructure, backend services, and frontend layers to deliver end-to-end data platform features.
• • Ship reliable, scalable data infrastructure that supports enterprise-grade analytics at scale.
• • Contribute to zero-to-one product development in a fast-moving, early-stage environment.
• • Required:
• • 4+ years of experience as a data systems, backend, infrastructure, or platform engineer with a focus on building or delivering data infrastructure.
• • Hands-on experience with OLAP lakehouse or data lakehouse architecture, including query optimization and join optimization.
• • Proficiency in Haskell and/or TypeScript (the team's primary tech stack).
• • Experience building and shipping distributed data systems or big data platforms (e.g., Apache Spark, Hadoop).
• • Demonstrated experience designing and implementing distributed systems components.
• • Experience working with databases — including schema design, indexing, and query execution.
• • Strong foundation in algorithms and data structures with real-world application.
• • Experience shipping products from zero to one in a startup or early-stage environment, ideally VC-backed.
• • Nice to Have:
• • Comfort working across multiple system layers: infrastructure, backend services, and frontend.
• • Prior experience at a VC-backed startup.
• • Background at companies operating in AI/ML, data engineering, or analytics infrastructure (e.g., companies like Databricks, ThoughtSpot, Hex, or similar).
• • Compensation & Benefits:
• • Salary: $200,000 – $350,000 USD annually, depending on experience.
• • Equity participation in a well-funded early-stage company.
• • Interview travel covered; hiring decisions made quickly (within ~72 hours of onsite interviews).
• • Location:
• • This role is on-site in New York City.
• • Candidates should be based in NYC or willing to relocate.
• • Remote work is not available for this position.