Software Engineer – Query Engines

The role

You will work on the query planning, execution and data processing infrastructure behind Palantir Foundry. The work extends open-source engines such as Apache Spark, Apache DataFusion and Apache Iceberg, from design through production.

What you will do

• Design and build query planning and optimization that turns complex computations into efficient execution plans
• Extend execution engines with new capabilities and improve operators, parallelism, memory management and data movement
• Develop Foundry's Iceberg catalog and engine integrations, including table metadata, transactions, reads and writes
• Build shared transformation semantics and execution interfaces for workloads across Foundry's products
• Improve incremental processing so pipelines reuse previous results while preserving correctness
• Evaluate and integrate advances in open-source data systems against real-world workloads
• Investigate correctness and performance issues across planning, execution and storage, and build tests and benchmarks to prevent regressions
• Work with product teams and customers to turn operational needs into engine capabilities

Required qualifications

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience developing database engines, distributed data processing, storage systems or comparable infrastructure
• Depth in query planning, execution or performance optimization
• Experience diagnosing correctness and performance problems in complex systems
• Strong written and verbal communication skills and ability to work across teams
• Ownership mindset and a high bar for correctness
• Strong debugging skills

Nice to have

• Experience building or extending systems such as Spark, DataFusion, Iceberg or comparable technologies
• Experience contributing to open-source projects

Benefits

• Medical, dental and vision insurance, with coverage for eligible dependents
• Voluntary life insurance and automatic basic life, AD&D and disability insurance
• Commuter benefits
• Relocation assistance
• Flexible paid time off, not accrual based
• 2 weeks paid time off at the end of each year (subject to team and business needs)
• 10 paid holidays per year
• Leave of absence program, including military service and medical events
• Paid leave for new parents and subsidized back-up care
• Fertility and family building benefits
• Stipend for expenses of a new child
• 401k plan

Before you apply

• Accommodations are available for the application and hiring process on request
• Palantir will never ask you to pay or share financial information during interviews

About the company

Palantir builds software for data-driven decisions and operations used by partners in areas such as drug development, supply chains and child safety. The company is an Equal Opportunity Employer.