Senior Software Engineer; Middleware

About the role

This position is embedded within the Analytics Compute Platform team, where you will steward the essential middleware that mediates between Amplitude's front-end products and the proprietary Nova analytics database. You will design and own the compute API responsible for converting user questions into accurate, high-speed insights while carefully balancing system flexibility against raw performance. The role requires you to translate ambiguous product needs into resilient backend services that feel instantaneous to end users. You will act as the architectural guardian of the data access layer, ensuring that changes in the front-end or database surface do not destabilize downstream consumers. You will refine the semantic layer so that it can gracefully support generic table structures and evolving cross-team feature requests. Collaboration will be central as you work alongside teams such as Session Replay, Experiment, CDP, and Query to align compute capabilities with emerging product strategies. You will manage projects from initial discovery and design through implementation, testing, and final rollout, ensuring that each release meets strict standards for reliability and maintainability.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Architect and implement core components of the query and compute engine that sits between user applications and the Nova database.
• Evolve the compute API and semantic layer to support generic table structures while enabling rapid feature development across multiple teams.
• Refine the core data model to integrate non-event data, such as lookup tables and profile properties, seamlessly with event data for richer analytics.
• Optimize query planning and execution paths to achieve improved scalability, reliability, and performance under heavy concurrent loads.
• Collaborate with internal teams including Session Replay, Experiment, CDP, and Query to ensure compute capabilities align precisely with product requirements and constraints.
• Manage projects from initial design discussions and technical specifications through final rollout, monitoring, and post-launch evaluation.
• Translate complex product questions into efficient SQL and system-level solutions that maintain a balance between flexibility, correctness, and speed.
• Participate in on-call rotations to respond to production incidents and contribute to long-term improvements in system resilience.
• Mentor junior engineers on best practices for API design, data modeling, and performance optimization within the middleware stack.
• Contribute to architectural decisions that shape the future of how data is accessed, transformed, and served across the Amplitude platform.

Requirements

• Bring professional experience in backend or distributed systems engineering, with a focus on OLAP databases, data infrastructure, or query engines.
• Demonstrate proficiency in SQL and hands-on experience with query execution or building APIs for internal engineering consumers.
• Show proven ability to navigate complex tradeoffs between performance, ease of use, and system flexibility in production environments.
• Provide a track record of owning ambiguous, cross-functional projects from initial concept through final delivery without constant direction.
• Exhibit strong communication skills to partner effectively with diverse product and engineering teams, translating technical constraints into clear business outcomes.
• Have experience working with large-scale data systems where latency, throughput, and reliability are critical success factors.
• Comfort with reading and modifying existing codebases that support high-throughput data processing and low-latency query serving.
• Commitment to writing clean, maintainable code and documenting architectural decisions so that future teams can build upon your work.

Nice to have

• Background in large-scale time-series or event data systems that help contextualize how analytics data is modeled and queried.
• Experience building ORMs, semantic layers, or other data-modeling abstractions that simplify access to complex data sets.
• Familiarity with columnar databases or OLAP query engines such as ClickHouse, Druid, or similar technologies.
• Experience integrating data platforms with AI agents or external tools, enabling programmable access to analytics capabilities.

Skills & tools

• SQL
• OLAP Databases
• Query Engines
• Distributed Systems
• Data Infrastructure
• API Design

Practical notes

• Salary range for California: $167,000 - $230,000 base salary (inclusive of bonus or commission).
• Compensation includes equity and a comprehensive benefits package.
• Benefits include 100% employer-paid premiums for select medical, dental, and vision plans, flexible time off, and an Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP).
• Additional perks include monthly wellness and commuter stipends, quarterly learning/development stipends, annual home office equipment stipends, and 12-20 weeks of paid parental leave.
• Mental health support provided via Modern Health and One Medical memberships.
• Amplitude is a public company (NASDAQ: $AMPL) founded in 2012.