Staff Software Engineer, Database (OLAP and Columnar Storage)

Company: Amplitude
Location: San Francisco
Posted on: February 1, 2025

Job Description:

About The Role & TeamWe're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help build our query engine and tackle big challenges in a fast-growing data company. Our engineers are leading the efforts to drive our large-scale distributed systems to the 10x level while making innovations to our industry-leading analytics capabilities. As a Staff engineer of the Query team, you will be responsible for designing, building, and operating the underlying distributed systems that power our core analytics product and other products (e.g., experiments, CDP, session reply). You will be working at all layers of the query engine from the high-level analytics algorithms to the low-level distributed computation and storage layer. Our systems are based on the modern cloud stack e.g. AWS S3, DynamoDB, Redis/ElastiCache, Kafka, Kubernetes, Terraform, Java, C++, Python. You will be collaborating and sharing your ideas with a group of similarly innovative and curious engineers.Our query engine (Nova) provides us with a competitive edge where we can provide customers with complex insights in real-time, using real-time data, and at a big data scale. A single larger query would require analyzing hundreds of billions of user events in real time. We achieved this by building an in-house OLAP database from the ground up, from the low-level distributed storage and computation layer to the high-level product analytics logic. Our design and architecture draw inspiration from many state-of-the-art systems in the big data space and we learned best practices from Druid, Scuba, Dremel, and other open-source projects (Apache Arrow, Apache IceBerg, etc.) to build our own query engine. Check out our engineering blog to learn more.As a Staff Software Engineer, you will:

• Take product ideas from ideation to implementation, develop components and services that expand the capabilities of our analytics product
• Scale the infrastructure for our rapid data growth
• Improve the system availability to be best in class
• Optimize performance to be blazingly fast
• Lead engineering discussions and mentor others on engineering best practicesYou'll be a great addition to the team if you have:
  • B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in Computer Science or another technical field
  • 7+ years of industry experience in a Software Engineering role
  • A strong foundation in multi-threading programming, data structures, algorithms, and software application design
  • Passion for solving challenging problems and iterating quickly
  • Strong communication skills and leadership
  • Experience with Java, C++ or Python
  • Previous experience in distributed systems, data processing, and analyticsBonus Experience
    • Deep understanding of OLAP systems and hands-on experience
    • Able to research a topic from papers and open source projects to come up with a solution to solve our problems
    • Technical leadership of an engineering team
    • Leading multi-quarter projects involving multiple engineersWho We AreThe Company: Amplitude is filled with humble, life-long learners who are eager to help one another and the company succeed. Our values of growth mindset, ownership, and humility are core to the way we work: we're tenacious in the face of challenges, we take the initiative to solve problems that drive our shared success, and we operate from a place of empathy and openness, seeking to understand many points of view.The Product: Amplitude is a digital analytics platform-we help companies capture data they can trust, uncover clear insights about customer behavior, and take faster action. This empowers teams to build better product experiences that drive business growth. We're super proud of what we've built and continue to expand: a platform that empowers companies to thrive in the digital era.We care about the well-being of our team: We offer competitive pay and benefits packages that reflect our commitment to the health and well-being of our Ampliteers.Some of our benefit programs include:
      • Excellent Medical, Dental and Vision insurance coverages, with 100% employer-paid premiums for employee Medical, Dental, Vision on select plans
      • Flexible time off, paid holidays, and more
      • Generous stipends to spend on what matters most to you, whether that's wellness (monthly), commuter transit/parking (monthly), learning and development (quarterly), home office equipment (annual), and much more
      • Excellent Parental benefits including: 12-20 weeks of Paid Parental Leave, Carrot Fertility Benefits/Adoption/Surrogacy support, Back-up Child Care support
      • Mental health and wellness benefits including no-cost employee access to Modern Health coaching & therapy sessions and high-quality physician office experience via One Medical membership (select U.S. locations only)
      • Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)Other fun facts about Amplitude:
        • We were recognized in the .
        • Our customers love us! They've said we're the for 15 quarters in a row on G2.#LI-JJ1#LI-HybridThis role is eligible for equity, benefits and other forms of compensation.
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Keywords: Amplitude, San Jose , Staff Software Engineer, Database (OLAP and Columnar Storage), IT / Software / Systems , San Francisco, California