Senior Software Engineer - Backend Performance -MarTech/AdTech

Three Pillars Recruiting; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Three Pillars Recruiting is seeking a Senior Software Engineer focused on Backend Performance in a fast-moving data-driven environment. The role emphasizes high-throughput pipelines, low-latency data paths, and systems-level optimizations across C/C++, Python, and GPU-accelerated work.

You will profile bottlenecks, write performance-critical code, and work with data products and infrastructure teams to optimize where it matters most.

Qualifications

• Strong systems engineering background with proficiency in C, C++, or Rust.
• Fluent Python for data processing with awareness of interpreter costs.
• Experience in profiling, memory management, and throughput analysis.

Responsibilities

• Profile, benchmark, and eliminate bottlenecks in performance-critical paths.
• Write high-performance code in C/C++, Cython, or Rust for hot paths.
• Apply CUDA GPU acceleration to pipeline execution where it delivers speedups.
• Engineer for parallelism and concurrency: threading, vectorization, memory layout.
• Add performance regression checks into CI pipelines.
• Collaborate with Data Products and infra teams to move work to the right primitives.

Skills

C/C++/Rust

Python

Performance profiling

Concurrency

PostgreSQL

Tools

CUDA

Arrow/Parquet

Job description

Senior Software Engineer — Backend Performance

As a Senior Software Engineer on Backend Performance, you own the hottest paths in data products — the code that has to be fast because everything downstream depends on it. You profile before you guess, drop into C/C++, Cython, or Rust when Python runs out of room, and reach for the GPU when it earns its keep. This is engineers-first, systems-heavy work: high-throughput pipeline execution and Reactor self-correction over large volumes of structured and unstructured data, made fast.

What You'll Do

• Profile, benchmark, and eliminate bottlenecks across the pipeline's performance-critical paths.


• Write performance-critical code in C/C++, Cython, and/or Rust for the hot paths where interpreted Python won't hold.


• Apply GPU acceleration (CUDA) to pipeline execution and Reactor self-correction where it delivers real speedups — and know when it doesn't.


• Engineer for parallelism and concurrency: threading, vectorization, memory layout, and data-movement costs.


• Build performance-regression detection into CI so hard-won gains don't quietly erode.


• Partner with the Data Products and infrastructure teams to move the right work to the right primitive.

What Will Help You Succeed

Core engineering

• Strong systems engineering background with deep proficiency in at least one of C, C++, or Rust. Cython and CUDA are a strong plus.


• Fluent in Python for data processing, with a real feel for where the interpreter costs you and how to escape it.


• Performance engineering: profiling, memory management, concurrency, cache behavior, and reasoning quantitatively about throughput and latency.

Systems & data

• Parallel, high-throughput processing — SIMD / vectorization, multiprocessing, or GPU parallelism.


• Experience moving and transforming large volumes of structured and unstructured data with low latency.


• PostgreSQL and strong data-structures and algorithms fundamentals.

Nice to have

• CUDA / kernel-level optimization or hardware-aware performance work; NVIDIA ecosystem depth.


• Lakehouse internals, columnar formats (Arrow / Parquet), or numeric/array computing.

The Role Is Right For You If

• You reach for a profiler before another machine, and you can explain exactly where your time is going.


• You write the systems code yourself. AI assistants speed you up; they don't do the engineering for you.