Middle Software Engineer — Query Engine / Data Platform

Job description

About Our Client

Our client is a leading enterprise data platform company building an open, high-performance data lakehouse for AI and analytical workloads. The platform combines an intelligent SQL query engine, an AI-ready semantic layer, and an open catalog built on Apache Iceberg — enabling Fortune 500 companies across finance, energy, manufacturing, and logistics to unify, query, and govern data at massive scale across cloud and on-premise sources.

About the Role

We are looking for a Middle-level Software Engineer to work on the core query engine of a large-scale distributed data platform. You will develop features across query planning, optimization, and execution, contribute to performance-critical components, and help investigate and fix production issues reported by real enterprise customers.

This is a systems-level, backend engineering role focused on distributed data processing internals — not application development or CRUD services.

Responsibilities

- Develop and maintain features across the query engine — planning, optimization, execution, and data access layers

- Write performance-conscious code in Java and/or C++

- Investigate and fix production and customer-reported issues under the guidance of senior engineers, including fixes delivered across multiple supported release lines

- Work with SQL semantics, query plans, and execution operators over large-scale distributed data

- Integrate with columnar formats, open table formats, and connectivity drivers

- Contribute to CI/CD and automated testing in Jenkins

- Deploy and validate changes on Kubernetes (GKE/EKS/AKS) across GCP, AWS, or Azure with Docker

- Debug issues across query planning, distributed execution, memory management, and I/O; collaborate with US-based teams on design and code reviews

Required Qualifications

- B. S. or M. S. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field

- 3+ years in backend / systems software engineering

- Strong proficiency in Java or C++ with solid OOP and software design fundamentals, including concurrency and asynchronous programming (comfort with both languages is especially valued)

- Strong SQL and understanding of relational and analytical data systems, including query execution concepts

- Hands-on experience with data processing systems: query engines, distributed databases, ETL/ELT, or analytical platforms

- Experience with Jenkins pipelines and modern development workflows

- Docker and basic Kubernetes (running workloads, debugging pods, kubectl fluency)

- Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud (GCP, AWS, or Azure)

- Confident Git/GitHub workflows

- Comfortable with AI-assisted development workflows — using modern AI tools for code comprehension, debugging, and test generation, and critically validating their output

- English Upper-Intermediate or higher (B2+) — daily written and verbal communication with a US-based engineering team

- Availability to work EU business hours shifted 2–3 hours later for daily overlap with US West Coast mornings

Desired Skills

- Apache Arrow (columnar in-memory format) and SQL planner/optimizer frameworks such as Apache Calcite

- LLVM-based runtime expression compilation

- Open table formats — Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, or Hudi — and columnar file formats such as Parquet, Avro, or ORC

- MPP query engines (Presto, Trino, or similar); exposure to distributed data platforms such as Spark, Snowflake, or Databricks

- Messaging systems: Kafka, NATS, or cloud pub/sub services

- Query planning, optimization, and execution internals

- Connectivity drivers: JDBC, ODBC, Arrow Flight

- Managed Kubernetes (GKE/EKS/AKS), multi-cloud exposure; Terraform

- Performance profiling of latency-sensitive systems

Details

- Engagement: Long-term contract

- Location: Europe (EU / EEA / UK), remote

- Working hours: EU business hours, shifted 2–3 hours later for daily overlap with the US West Coast team