We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer who wants to go deep on the engine internals and the infrastructure underneath. You'll own significant components of a modern OLAP system, across query execution, columnar storage, distributed compute, caching, and cloud infrastructure, and drive meaningful improvements to performance, cost-efficiency, and reliability. This role is ideal for someone who finds real satisfaction in making a complex distributed system faster, cheaper, and more reliable — and who wants to do that work on a system that directly powers the product experience for thousands of enterprise customers.
THE IMPACT YOU WILL DELIVER
Build the next generation of Nova
Own core components across query execution, columnar storage, and distributed compute.
Design elastic query infrastructure for AI agents as first-class clients, targeting 10× query throughput with predictable performance and lower cost per query.
Solve deep performance problems across engine internals and cloud infrastructure, from JVM and memory optimization to distributed execution.
Own production reliability through on-call, incident investigation, and architectural improvements that prepare Nova for its next stage of growth.
Shape what comes next
Set technical direction for major initiatives and lead them from proposal through production, with clear milestones and measurable results.
Decide what to build, what to adopt, and how to evolve Nova for its next order of magnitude in scale.
Work across engineering and product to set priorities and resolve trade-offs between capabilities, complexity, and cost.
Help senior engineers take on larger technical problems through design reviews, debugging, and shared ownership.
WHO YOU ARE
You are a systems-minded engineer who
Gets energy from working inside complex distributed systems, finding bottlenecks, and making meaningful improvements.
Has built or significantly extended a query engine, storage engine, or distributed data processing system.
Makes sound trade-offs across performance, cost, correctness, and reliability, and builds support for technical decisions across teams.
Helps engineers take on harder problems through design reviews and debugging, while staying open to new ideas and learning from others.
REQUIREMENTS
8+ years of industry experience in backend or infrastructure engineering, with depth in distributed data systems.
Hands-on experience building or extending analytical or OLAP systems: query engines, columnar storage, large-scale data processing or streaming frameworks, or equivalent.
Track record of leading multi-month, cross-team technical projects from design through production, including significant cost or performance wins on cloud infrastructure.
Strong computer science fundamentals: distributed systems (partitioning, replication, consistency, failover), data structures and algorithms, concurrency, performance optimization.
Demonstrated technical influence beyond your immediate team: leading design discussions, driving cross-team alignment, mentoring engineers.
Proficiency in Java, C++ or Python.
NICE TO HAVE
Experience with query or OLAP systems such as Druid, ClickHouse, Presto/Trino, Spark, BigQuery or Snowflake.
Experience with SQL planning and optimization, or with building SQL layers over heterogeneous storage.
Familiarity with open table and columnar formats (Iceberg, Parquet, Arrow, ORC) and warehouse-native architectures.
Familiarity with product analytics, experimentation platforms, event-driven data systems, or serving data to LLM and agent workloads.
OUR VALUES
At Amplitude, our values guide how we show up for one another and for our customers:
Humility: We operate from a place of empathy and openness, seeking to understand many points of view.
Ownership: We take the initiative to solve problems that drive our shared company success.
Growth Mindset: We’re tenacious in the face of challenges and seek feedback in order to grow ourselves and others.
Customer Centricity: We put the customer at the center of everything we do and are deeply committed to their success.
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 M edical, D ental and V ision insurance coverages, with 100% employer-paid premiums for employee Medical, Dental, Vision on select plans
401(k) retirement plan with an employer match of up to 1% of your eligible pay each pay period up to $2,000 annually
Flexible time off, p aid 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), new hire home office equipment, and much more
Excellent Parental benefits including : 12 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
Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)
Other fun facts about Amplitude
Our customers love us! They've said we're the #1 product analytics solution https://www.g2.com/categories/product-analytics/enterprise for 23 quarters in a row on G2.
We care a lot about product innovation. We've made significant investments in talent and infrastructure to build the most powerful AI analytics platform on the market.
We invest in our people. We offer mentorship programs, management training, and wellness initiatives.
We give back to our communities. We give every Ampliteer a charitable giving grant and paid volunteer time off.
We were founded in 2012, went public via a direct listing in September 2021, and are now trading under the ticker $AMPL.
We’re a global and fast-growing team! We have employees around the world and offices in San Francisco (HQ), New York, Vancouver, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Singapore, and Tokyo.
Our mascot is Data Monster, who loves to chow down on numbers, charts, and graphs. Nom nom.
By applying for this job, you acknowledge that Amplitude processes your personal data in accordance with the Amplitude Applicant Privacy Notice https://amplitude.com/job-applicant-privacy-notice.
