Backend Founding Engineer - Data / Infrastructure

Snowflake, DuckDB, Trino, ClickHouse.

Onsite: San Francsico

We’re partnering with a stealth-mode startup that’s building the next-generation data infrastructure platform. As a Founding Engineer, you'll be instrumental in shaping the technical foundation of the company, working closely with the founding team to design and build systems that support a variety of modern data storage and processing technologies.

This is a full-time, in-person role based in San Francisco, offering the rare opportunity to join at ground zero and own critical parts of the product and architecture from day one.

You’ll thrive in this role if you:

• Have strong experience in backend development with a deep understanding of data engineering and infrastructure at scale
• Are excited by the challenge of building complex distributed systems from scratch
• Want to play a pivotal role in a well-funded, early-stage environment where your work has direct impact

You’ll be working on:

• Designing logic to intelligently route analytical queries between engines (e.g., Snowflake, DuckDB, Trino, ClickHouse) based on cost, performance, and freshness
• Building a system that can serialize SQL view representations for use across multiple query engines
• Creating automated benchmarks to measure query latency, throughput, and cost across real-world workloads
• Developing robust APIs to simulate and test the behavior of various query engines under different loads
• Contributing to the creation of a next-gen storage layer optimized for columnar engines and Iceberg table formats
• Ensuring data integrity and consistency across distributed query engines
• Scaling core infrastructure for performance, reliability, and cost-effectiveness

Ideal experience:

• Background in data engineering, data warehousing, or distributed systems
• Familiarity with cloud-based data platforms like Snowflake, Databricks, Dremio, or ClickHouse
• Experience with open table formats such as Iceberg, Hudi, or Delta Lake
• Strong grasp of ETL, data modeling, database tuning, and query optimization
• Proficiency in Python, Rust, or Java
• Previous experience in startups or early-stage teams is a big plus