Staff Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure

. Design, build, and operate reliable and scalable data infrastructure powering Slack’s analytics, ML, and data-driven decision-making .

Posted 5/14/2026full-timeSan Francisco • California, Washington • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $197,300 - $313,700 per yearWebsite

Tools & technologies

AirflowChefGoGrafanaKubernetesPythonSQLTerraformVault

Key responsibilities & impact

Design, build, and operate reliable and scalable data infrastructure powering Slack’s analytics, ML, and data-driven decision-making
Serve as DRI for multiple core data services specifically on our analytics infrastructure (e.g., StarRocks, Pinot, and Trino), ensuring uptime, reliability, and our compute and orchestration services (e.g., Airflow, Temporal, EMR, Hive Metastore)
Drive improvements in security, cost efficiency, and developer experience across our data infrastructure
Build automation and self-service tools that empower our team and other data teams to easily adopt and manage data workflows
Collaborate closely with data engineering, platform, and security teams to design scalable, well-governed solutions
Build and enhance our observability, monitoring, and alerting on our services via Grafana and related tooling
Partner with other staff and senior engineers to define best practices, technical standards, and support models for Slack’s data ecosystem
Mentor and coach other engineers, modeling ownership, collaboration, and operational excellence

What you’ll need

U.S. Citizenship or Permanent Residency (Green Card holder)
10+ years of software, platform, or infrastructure engineering experience, including time spent supporting data-intensive systems or data platforms
Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate across cross-functional teams
Proven experience in building, deploying, and operating distributed infrastructure at scale
Strong technical background with big data and infrastructure technologies — such as Pinot, StarRocks, Trino, EMR, Airflow, Hive Metastore, Kubernetes, or equivalent systems
Proficiency in Python, Golang, Bash, and SQL
Proficiency with CI/CD (GitHub Actions), Vault, Terraform, Chef, and Grafana
Deep understanding of infrastructure reliability, observability, and cost efficiency principles
Hands-on experience supporting data pipelines or data engineering workflows is a strong plus
A strong sense of ownership and a drive to deliver high-impact, autonomous results

Comp & perks

ATS Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

PythonGolangBashSQLStarRocksPinotTrinoEMRAirflowKubernetes

Soft Skills

communicationcollaborationownershipmentoringcoachingoperational excellence