Senior Software Engineer - Metadata

United States Digital Space LLC; Oakland (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 168,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

100% employer-paid medical insurance

Generous PTO and holidays

RSU stock grants

Professional development

Team-building activities

Monthly cell phone stipend

Mental health platform access

Job summary

dbt Labs is seeking a senior software engineer to join the Metadata team, owning the design and delivery of features end to end across high-throughput APIs and data models. You will build faster, more reliable services and collaborate with product and QE to scale capabilities.

You’ll write and review designs, raise the quality bar in code review, and leverage AI tooling to accelerate development and SDLC artifacts.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in the software industry, including backend services and reusable components.
• Experience with distributed systems and cloud computing concepts.
• Demonstrated ability to write well-structured, performant, and well-tested code.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement features and performance improvements across the Metadata team's services—discovery API, catalog, lineage, and run history.
• Develop, maintain, and test high-quality code and optimize critical paths for performance.
• Write technical designs for feature work and clearly explain trade-offs of decisions.
• Participate in reviews, provide constructive feedback, and ensure high-quality PRs.

Skills

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms

CI tooling

Code reviews

AI tools

Tools

Python

Rust

GraphQL

Postgres

Snowflake

Kafka

Kubernetes

Docker

AWS

GCP

Datadog

Job description

From the company’s founding until now, our mission has remained the same: to make access to data as simple and reliable as electricity. With the company, customer data arrives in their warehouses, canonical and ready to query, with no engineering or maintenance required. We’re proud that more organizations continue to leverage our technology every day to become truly data-driven.

About Us

the company and dbt Labs are bringing together two industry-leading companies with a shared mission: helping organizations unlock the full value of their data.

Together, we’re delivering the data infrastructure layer that helps organizations move, transform, and trust their data — from the moment data moves, through every transformation, to the context teams and AI systems rely on.

the company helps organizations automate data movement across the systems, clouds, engines, and tools they rely on. dbt Labs pioneered analytics engineering, helping teams transform data into reliable, governed insights. Together, we support thousands of organizations as they build a trusted foundation for analytics, AI, and better business decisions.

As we bring our teams and technology together, we’re building on the strengths of both companies while continuing to deliver the products and experiences our customers know and trust. It’s an exciting time to join us: we’re creating a company with the scale, talent, and technology to help more organizations put their data to work with greater speed, confidence, and impact.

During this transition period, you may see references to both the company and dbt Labs throughout our recruiting process as we integrate our teams, systems, and career sites.

About the Role

the company and dbt Labs is building data pipelines to power the modern data stack for thousands of companies.

We're looking for a senior software engineer to join our Metadata team, which owns the metadata layer of the dbt platform — the discovery API, catalog, lineage, and run history services that let customers understand, trust, and act on what their data is doing.

You’ll own the design and delivery of features end to end, working across high-throughput APIs and data models to make them faster, more reliable, and more capable. You’ll write and review designs, raise the quality bar in code review, use the latest AI tools, and collaborate closely with product and QE to deliver work that scales.

Technologies You’ll Use

Python, Rust, GraphQL, Postgres, Snowflake, Kafka, Kubernetes, Docker, AWS, GCP, Datadog

What You’ll Do

• Design and implement features and performance improvements across the Metadata team's services — discovery API, catalog, lineage, and run history
• Develop, maintain, and test high-quality, maintainable code, and optimize critical paths for performance
• Write technical designs for feature-level work, actively seek feedback, and clearly explain the trade-offs of your decisions
• Participate in and review technical designs and pull requests, providing constructive feedback to the team
• Improve test coverage with comprehensive unit tests and refactor code to drive down tech debt
• Troubleshoot and debug production issues, and follow up on incidents with post-mortems and mitigation plans
• Break features into tasks, structure and execute your own project plans, and contribute to sprint and feature planning
• Collaborate with product managers, QE, customer support, and peers to deliver the best product with high quality, performance, and scalability
• Participate periodically in the on-call rotation, and be mindful of security throughout your work
• Use AI tooling — IDE assistants like GitHub Copilot, coding agents like Claude Code, and conversational AI — to accelerate development and to author and review SDLC artifacts such as TDDs, PRDs, post-mortems, and test plans

Skills We’re Looking For

• 5+ years of experience in the software industry with a passion for solving complex software engineering problems, including designing and building backend services and reusable components from the ground up
• Experience working with distributed systems and cloud computing concepts
• Demonstrated ability to write well-structured, performant, and well-tested code
• Ability to independently lead feature-level software and design work that satisfies project requirements, and to clearly explain design trade-offs
• Can identify design flaws in existing systems and propose improvements
• Experience with code reviews, design, troubleshooting, and testing
• Proficiency in a modern backend or systems language such as Python, Java, C++, or C#
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Experience with continuous integration tooling such as BuildKite, and familiarity with observability tools like Datadog or Grafana is a plus
• Fluent in using AI code assistants and coding agents to generate and investigate code, and conversational AI (e.g. Claude, ChatGPT) to research, author, review, and synthesize SDLC artifacts

Bonus Skills

• Experience in data processing (ETL, ELT) and/or cloud-based data platforms
• Experience building or working with metadata, catalog, lineage, or discovery/search systems
• Experience with GraphQL APIs and high-throughput, multi-tenant data services
• Familiarity with the analytics engineering workflow and the dbt ecosystem

The compensation range displayed on this job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire compensation for the target position and level, and may include sales incentives or target bonuses depending on the role. Our compensation ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Our job titles may span more than one career level. Within the range, individual compensation is determined by additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, relevant education or training, business need, market demands. The compensation range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. Your recruiter can share more about the specific compensation range for your location during the hiring process.

Oakland Pay Range

$139,869 — $167,849.50 USD

Perks and Benefits

• 100% employer-paid medical insurance*
• Generous paid time-off policy (PTO), plus paid sick time, inclusive parental leave policy, holidays (including a year end Global Week of Rest), and volunteer days off
• RSU stock grants*
• Professional development and training opportunities
• Company virtual happy hours, free food, and fun team-building activities
• Monthly cell phone stipend
• Access to an innovative mental health support platform that offers personalized care and resources in areas such as: therapy, coaching, and self-guided mindfulness exercises for all covered employees and their covered dependents.

*May vary by country and worker type - please reach out to your recruiter for more information