Staff Backend Engineer
Sift Stack, Inc.11 months ago
Base Salary
$200k - $250k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and operate backend systems that process and store large volumes of real-time telemetry data.
- Own features end-to-end from design through post-launch improvement.
- Collaborate with Frontend, Design, and Data teams to solve customer problems.
- Optimize backend systems for performance, scalability, and reliability.
- Migrate services and improve caching, storage, and indexing layers.
- Participate in on-call rotations, debug live issues, and improve observability.
- Raise engineering standards through code reviews, shared patterns, and mentorship.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, or another STEM discipline.
- 7+ years of experience in backend or infrastructure roles.
- Strong understanding of distributed systems fundamentals, including state, fault tolerance, and recovery.
- Experience with Go, Rust, or Python and strong Linux and networking fundamentals.
- Deep knowledge of SQL and operational database practices including indexing, migrations, and tuning.
- Experience building and scaling APIs with gRPC and Protobuf.
- Strong debugging skills and a production-first mindset.
- Familiarity with Kubernetes, Prometheus, Argo CD, and other modern infrastructure tools.
- Bonus experience with streaming or time-series data systems such as Kafka, Flink, or TimescaleDB.
- Bonus experience with performance tuning, query or service-layer profiling, and observability tools such as Datadog or Grafana.
- Background in hardware or telemetry-heavy environments is a plus.
- Must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or other protected individual eligible under ITAR and EAR regulations.
Benefits
- Equity and benefits are provided.
- Hybrid collaboration requires in-person work twice weekly on Mondays and Thursdays, plus a full in-person week every two months.
- Relocation to Los Angeles or work from the San Francisco office may be available for the right candidate.
Tech Stack
Apache FlinkApache KafkaArgo CDAWSDatadogDockerGitHub ActionsGoGrafanagRPCLinuxPostgreSQLPrometheusPythonReactRustSQLTypeScript
About Sift Stack, Inc.
Sift Stack builds a data infrastructure and telemetry analysis platform for hardware engineering teams in aerospace, defense, autonomy, and energy. Its software ingests, stores, and analyzes high-frequency machine data to automate anomaly detection, accelerate testing, and support operations for rockets, satellites, autonomous vehicles, and other mission-critical systems. Founded in 2022 and privately held, Sift is headquartered in El Segundo, California, and was started by former SpaceX engineers.