Staff, Backend Engineer - Catalog

The Challenge

As AI and data products become business-critical, enterprises face a metadata crisis:

• No unified way to track the complex data supply chain feeding AI systems
• Engineering teams struggling with data discovery, lineage, and governance
• Organizations needing machine-scale metadata management, not just human-browsable catalogs

Why This Matters

This is where infrastructure meets impact. The metadata layer you'll build will directly power the next generation of AI systems at massive scale. Your code will determine how safely and effectively thousands of organizations deploy AI, affecting millions of users worldwide.

The Role

We're looking for an exceptional Staff, Backend engineer to lead development of DataHub's Platform framework - the core that connects diverse data systems and powers our metadata collection capabilities.

You'll Build

• Scalable, fault-tolerant ingestion systems for enterprise-scale metadata
• Clean, intuitive APIs for our connector ecosystem
• Event-driven architectures for real-time metadata processing
• Schema mapping between diverse systems and DataHub's unified model
• Versioning systems for AI assets (training data, model weights, embeddings)

You Have

• 8+ years building production-grade distributed systems
• Advanced Python and API design expertise
• Experience with high-scale data processing or integration frameworks
• Strong systems knowledge and distributed architecture experience
• Proven track record solving complex technical challenges
• Built and maintained online applications serving live traffic at scale (100+ QPS)
• Set up monitoring and alerting for services
• Designed indexing, storage, and data architectures to make large-scale data accessible to online services
• Designed and scaled distributed systems
• Hands-on experience developing in a tight loop with LLMs and applying best practices for scalable LLM development

Languages

• One of Java/Scala/Kotlin/C#/Go - very strong nice-to-have / borderline must-have
• Python/TypeScript/Node.js - nice-to-have

Technical Skills

• AWS
• Kubernetes/Docker
• CI/CD deployment pipelines
• Microservice Architecture

Bonus Points

• Experience with DataHub or similar metadata/ETL frameworks (Airflow, Airbyte, dbt)
• Open-source contributions
• Experience building and maintaining services that make calls to LLMs in order to serve live traffic
• Experience fine-tuning LLM-powered applications exposed to end users
• Early-stage startup experience

Location and Compensation

Bay Area (hybrid, 3 days in Palo Alto office)

Salary Range

$225,000 to $300,000

Benefits and Perks

We invest in people so they can do their best work and enjoy doing it. Our benefits reflect the way we build: practical, thoughtful, and designed to support long-term growth.

Competitive compensation

We offer salaries that reflect your skills, experience, and the impact you make. You bring value-we make sure you're recognized for it.

Equity for everyone

Every team member receives an ownership stake in the company. When we grow, you grow with us.

Remote Work

All roles are remote unless otherwise specified in the job description. Review the job description to confirm if the role you are interested in is remote or hybrid.

Location flexibility

• Home office, coworking space, or something in between?
• We support your ideal setup.
• You'll receive a monthly coworking stipend to use whenever you need a change of pace or in-person collaboration time.

Comprehensive health coverage

Your well-being matters. We cover 99% of medical, dental, and vision premiums employees, and 65% for dependents.

Flexible savings accounts

We offer FSAs to help cover planned or unexpected healthcare costs. You can also opt into a Dependent Care FSA to support family needs.

Time off that works for you

We trust you to take the time you need. Our unlimited PTO and sick leave policy is designed for flexibility, rest, and real life.