Staff Software Engineer, Platform

We’re a global team of over 400 people, working together to push the boundaries of open-source technology and multi-cloud solutions. Our vision is to help developers, builders, and creators bring their ideas to life with speed and simplicity, by providing a cloud data platform that makes open-source databases, search, streaming, and application infrastructure easily accessible to everyone. 

The Role:

We are looking for an experienced staff engineer (Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of relevant experience.) to take on a key technical role within our internal platform team. This is a critical role contributing to and shaping Aiven’s platform strategy which defines the evolution of our platform architecture as an individual contributor.

You will be a member of the platform team which owns Aiven’s BYOC offering, integrations with all hyperscaler clouds, networking features (e.g. VPC, Private Link, firewalls, etc.) and other core platform features like storage and update processes. You will be working closely with the engineering and product teams across all domains.

What You'll Do:

• Strategic Planning: Partner with engineering leaders to influence the domain's roadmap, ensuring alignment across multiple engineering teams and balancing business growth with platform resilience.
• Leadership & Delivery: Own delivery outcomes for the domain. Identify systemic gaps in efficiency and drive improvements in the software delivery lifecycle across the platform.
• Team Enablement: Empower your team to act as "product custodians" by consistently addressing foundational and production issues.
• Culture Building: Help to foster a psychologically safe, high-trust environment where curiosity and healthy debate are encouraged.
• Collaboration: Practice effective communication and collaboration both within the team and across the wider organization and act as a role model in transparency for your peers.
• Technical Leadership & Implementation: Set the standard for code quality and system design. Guide the team in the hands-on implementation of key platform features in Python, ensuring maintainability and performance. 

What We're Looking For: 

As a leading engineer within the internal platform team, you are expected to be a key driver to the team's roadmap and delivery.

This includes shaping the future architecture as well as design and review of individual features.

You bring a passion not only for coding but actively sharing your knowledge and experience with your peers as well.  With your experience as an individual contributor, you are able to write and review RFCs, PoCs and features that raise the bar.

Leadership skills:

• Product Thinking: A strong product sense that enables you to design innovative, cloud-native products with our customers in mind.
• Communication: Excellent communication skills in English, with the ability to effectively share complex design concepts within engineering teams, as well as to less technical audiences.
• influencing: The ability to bring the right group of people together and align them on the approach towards the best possible solution.
• Mentoring: Becoming a multiplier by mentoring the engineers you are working with.

Technical skills:

• Distributed Systems: Experience in building and designing distributed systems in a cloud environment.
• Database Concepts: Strong knowledge of database fundamentals, including OLAP vs. OLTP, persistence, replication, and clustering.
• Observability: A good grasp of monitoring and observability tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry.
• SQL Proficiency: The ability to work with SQL to interact with our platform's master database.
• Release & Quality: Deep understanding of release management and testing best practices to own the delivery pipeline.
• Problem-Solving: A genuine interest in solving complex technical challenges with customer-focused solutions.

Amazing! What’s next:

If you think Aiven is the place for you and that our Values align with yours, send us your resume and we’ll get in touch!

Global Benefits:

Our global benefits are designed to help you thrive and grow, personally and professionally:

• Participate in Aiven’s equity plan.
• Balance work and life with our hybrid work policy.
• Choose the equipment you need to set yourself up for success.
• Use your Professional Development Plan budget for learning opportunities.
• Receive holistic wellbeing support through our global Employee Assistance Program.
• Inquire about our Global Time Off Commitment (Parental and Sick Leave, as well as Personal Time)
• Enjoy country-specific benefits for our global cast.

How to Recognize and Avoid Employment Scams:

There has been a rise in fake job postings used by scammers to get personal information. At Aiven, all of our emails relating to recruitment come from an @aiven.io, @greenhouse.io or @eu.greenhouse.io domain and all of our interviews are conducted by video call or in person.  Our interviews will never occur via text or chat. If you’re unsure of the legitimacy of a job opportunity/offer pertaining to Aiven, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at recruitment@aiven.io.

Equal Opportunities:

Aiven provides equal employment opportunities to all qualified employees and applicants for employment without regard to age, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, physical and mental ability, marital and family status or without regard to any other similar personal attributes. Aiven complies with applicable local laws governing non-discrimination in employment in every location in which the company operates. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, training and any other terms and conditions related to employment.

At Aiven we are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities or special needs in our working environment and job application procedures. We make all reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities or who otherwise need support to thrive in the workplace. We are committed to continuously improving workplace accessibility. There is an option to request a discussion in the application process but if you have any questions before applying please write to us at recruitment@aiven.io.