Software Engineer, Distributed Systems

About The Role

As a Software Engineer III (L3) on Data Runtime, you'll design and build the systems that execute every query at Mixpanel. You'll contribute to the technical design for complex distributed-systems projects, from prototype to global rollout, on initiatives like elastic query compute, the distributed file cache, columnar storage internals, and compaction.

You'll work alongside some of the most senior engineers at Mixpanel, partner with peer infrastructure teams (Query Serving, Streaming, Data Foundation) and product teams (Core Analysis, AI-powered experiences) on shared architecture, and have real influence over the technical direction of the compute layer that Mixpanel's AI-first future runs on.

We're Looking For Someone Who Has

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating data infra/backend systems, with a track record of shipping quality work quickly.
• A solid foundation in distributed systems or data infrastructure, and the drive to go deep.
• Experience owning a project or significant component end to end: driving the design, building it, shipping it, and running it in production.
• Strong technical communication, especially in writing, e.g., design docs, code review, async discussion across a distributed team.
• Sound judgment in technical tradeoffs, informed by real lessons from operating systems in production.
• High ownership and accountability.
• A desire to be at the forefront of the infrastructure powering AI-first analytics at thousands of companies.

Technical Skills We Value

• Languages: Go, C/C++, Python, and SQL.
• Distributed systems: sharding/partitioning, replication, distributed scheduling, work fanout/merge, consistent hashing.
• Storage & query engines: columnar formats (Arrow/Parquet or in-house equivalents), indexing, and compression.
• Caching: distributed file/block caches, admission and eviction policies, tiered storage.
• Performance engineering: profiling (pprof, perf), concurrency, memory management, benchmarking.
• Cloud & infra: GCP (GCS, GKE, Spanner) or equivalent AWS/Azure, Kubernetes.
• Reliability: observability (metrics, tracing, logging), SLOs, incident management.
• AI-augmented engineering: LLM tooling to accelerate development, triage, and operations.

How We Work

• Teams operate as autonomous pods, with engineering, product, and design working side by side on clear strategic goals. Teams have direct access to customer feedback, product usage data, business metrics, and design context.
• We start with customer problems. We reason from first principles. We challenge assumptions. We aim for simple solutions to complex problems and avoid unnecessary abstraction.
• Engineering owns execution, quality, and operations. There are no project managers, QA teams, or separate SREs. Ownership stays with the people building the product.
• We value written thinking, dashboards, and demos over slide decks. We work openly using tools like Slack, GitHub, Mixpanel, Notion, Figma, and Zoom - and we lean heavily on AI-assisted development (Claude Code and beyond).
• Our team is distributed across North America, with strong clusters in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York.

Compensation

The amount listed below is the total target cash compensation (TTCC) and includes base compensation and variable compensation in the form of either a company bonus or commissions. Variable compensation type is determined by your role and level. In addition to the cash compensation provided, this position is also eligible for equity consideration and other benefits including medical, vision, and dental insurance coverage. You can view our benefits offerings here.

Our salary ranges are determined by role and level and are benchmarked to the SF Bay Area Technology data cut released by Radford, a global compensation database. The range displayed represents the minimum and maximum TTCC for new hire salaries for the position across all of our US locations. To stay on top of market conditions, we refresh our salary ranges twice a year so these ranges may change in the future.

Within the range, individual pay is determined by experience, job-related skills, qualifications, and other factors. If you have questions about the specific range, your recruiter can share this information.

Mixpanel Compensation Range $157,500—$213,000 USD

Benefits and Perks

• Comprehensive Medical, Vision, and Dental Care
• Mental Wellness Benefit
• Generous Vacation Policy & Additional Company Holidays
• Enhanced Parental Leave
• Volunteer Time Off
• Additional US Benefits: Pre-Tax Benefits including 401(K), Wellness Benefit, Holiday Break

*please note that benefits and perks for contract positions will vary*

Culture Values

• Make Bold Bets: We choose courageous action over comfortable progress.
• Innovate with Insight: We tackle decisions with rigor and judgment - combining data, experience and collective wisdom to drive powerful outcomes.
• One Team: We collaborate across boundaries to achieve far greater impact than any of us could accomplish alone.
• Candor with Connection: We build meaningful relationships that enable honest feedback and direct conversations.
• Champion the Customer: We seek to deeply understand our customers' needs, ensuring their success is our north star.
• Powerful Simplicity: We find elegant solutions to complex problems, making sophisticated things accessible.

Why choose Mixpanel?

We're a leader in analytics with over 29,000 customers and $277M invested from prominent investors: like Andreessen-Horowitz, Sequoia, YC, and, most recently, Bain Capital. Mixpanel's pioneering event-based data analytics platform offers a powerful yet simple solution for companies to understand user behaviors and easily track overarching company success metrics.

Our accomplished teams continuously facilitate our expansion by tackling the ever-evolving challenges tied to scaling, reliability, design, and service. Choosing to work at Mixpanel means you'll be helping the world's most innovative companies learn from their data so they can make better decisions.