Distributed Systems Engineer

About the role

You will own the design and evolution of distributed systems that serve as the foundational layer for a data platform built on first principles. You will translate abstract product requirements into concrete system architectures while maintaining strict adherence to reliability and performance standards. You will collaborate closely with product and data teams to define interfaces, tradeoffs, and service boundaries that enable rapid iteration. You will be responsible for writing production grade code that is testable, observable, and maintainable over long time horizons. You will participate in the full lifecycle of software delivery, from initial design through deployment, monitoring, and iterative improvement. You will use clear technical communication to articulate complex system behavior to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. You will review code and designs from peers, providing constructive feedback that elevates the overall quality of the engineering organization. You will continuously assess new technologies and patterns, adopting those that improve scalability, resilience, and operational simplicity.

Key facts

What you'll do

Investigate existing services and identify bottlenecks that limit throughput or increase latency for critical data workflows.

Refactor legacy components into modular services that can be independently developed, deployed, and scaled by product teams.

Design interfaces and contracts that allow multiple consumer teams to integrate with shared infrastructure without tight coupling.

Implement observability practices, including structured logging, metrics, and tracing, to provide insight into system behavior in production.

Build automation for deployment pipelines, testing strategies, and environment management to reduce manual effort and human error.

Evaluate consistency models and failure modes to ensure that systems behave predictably under stress, network partitions, and partial outages.

Collaborate with data engineers to align storage formats, serialization strategies, and access patterns for efficient data movement.

Champion engineering standards by documenting best practices, coding conventions, and architectural decision records for future reference.

Mentor junior engineers by providing hands on guidance during code reviews, debugging sessions, and design discussions.

Explore scalability limits through load testing, capacity planning, and iterative optimization of critical service paths.

Participate in on call rotations to respond to incidents, diagnose issues, and implement improvements that prevent recurrence.

Contribute to open source dependencies and internal tools that enhance the reliability and developer experience of the broader ecosystem.

Challenge assumptions about current implementations by asking probing questions about performance, security, and long term maintainability.

Drive initiatives that align technical strategy with business outcomes, ensuring that engineering efforts deliver measurable value to users.

Requirements

You have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

You have professional experience building or maintaining distributed systems, including services, databases, or messaging platforms.

You are proficient in at least one modern programming language such as Java, Go, Python, or Rust, and you write clean, idiomatic code.

You understand networking fundamentals, including TCP/IP, HTTP, and common application layer protocols and their tradeoffs.

You have used version control systems, such as Git, to manage source code and collaborate effectively within a team workflow.

You are comfortable reading and interpreting technical documentation, API specifications, and design documents to integrate new components.

You have experience with debugging production issues, using logs, metrics, and traces to isolate root causes quickly and effectively.

You value code reviews, testing, and feedback loops, and you actively seek ways to improve the quality and reliability of your work.

You are able to communicate technical concepts clearly in writing and in conversation with engineers and non engineers alike.

Nice to have

Experience with cloud platforms and infrastructure as code tools is beneficial but not required.

Practical notes

This role is based in New York and is a full time position.