Staff Backend Engineer

The role

You will design, build, and operate backend systems that process and store large volumes of real-time telemetry data. You will own features end-to-end and collaborate with Frontend, Design, and Data teams.

What you will do

• Design, build, and operate backend systems that process and store large volumes of real-time telemetry data.
• Own features end-to-end, from design to post-launch improvement.
• Collaborate with Frontend, Design, and Data teams to ensure features solve real customer problems.
• Optimize backend systems for performance, scalability, and reliability.
• Contribute to system evolution—migrating services, introducing caches, and improving storage or indexing layers.
• Participate in on-call rotations, debugging live issues, and improving observability.
• Raise the bar through code reviews, shared patterns, and mentorship.

Required qualifications

• 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—state, fault tolerance, recovery.
• Experience with Go, Rust, or Python, and strong Linux/networking fundamentals.
• Deep knowledge of SQL and operational database experience (indexing, migrations, tuning).
• Experience building and scaling APIs (REST, gRPC/Protobuf).
• Strong debugging skills and a production-first mindset.

Nice to have

• Familiarity with Kubernetes, Prometheus, Argo CD, and other modern infrastructure tools.
• Experience with streaming or time-series data systems (Kafka, Flink, TimescaleDB, etc.).
• Experience with performance tuning and profiling at query or service layers.
• Familiarity with observability tools (Datadog, Grafana).
• Background in hardware or telemetry-heavy environments.

Benefits

• Equity
• Benefits

Before you apply

• U.S. Person Required: Must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual such as an asylee or refugee in compliance with ITAR / EAR regulations.

About the company

Sift is the data infrastructure platform for hardware engineering teams. Founded by former SpaceX engineers, Sift turns high-frequency telemetry into engineering insights for mission-critical systems.