Senior Software Engineer, Platform

Clera; United States; On-site; USD 200,000 - 350,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Visa sponsorship available

Equity participation

Job summary

Clera, a fast-growing AI-native analytics company in New York City, seeks a backend/platform engineer to build scalable distributed systems powering an agentic data lakehouse. You will shape the core services supporting AI-enabled analytics and collaborate with data engineers and ML researchers.

The role demands strong Go proficiency, hands-on work with gRPC/ConnectRPC, Trino, Kubernetes, DuckDB, and PostgreSQL, plus experience designing ETL pipelines and distributed orchestration.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience as a backend or platform engineer building scalable distributed systems.
• Proficiency in Golang with ability to contribute across infra, services, or frontend.
• Hands-on experience with gRPC/ConnectRPC, Trino, Kubernetes, DuckDB and PostgreSQL in a distributed data platform.
• Experience designing or implementing ETL pipelines, data modeling, or schema design.
• Experience building orchestration systems for distributed agents (API integrations, rate limiting, OAuth, etc.).
• Prior startup experience, ideally building products from zero to one.
• Bachelor's degree in CS/Software Engineering or comparable experience.
• Strong CS fundamentals.

Responsibilities

• Agentic Semantic Layer: Build system that gives AI agents context to query enterprise data and guardrails for trustworthy results.
• Distributed Agent Orchestration: Design orchestration systems for agents interacting with the real world (APIs, rate limits, OAuth, routing, scheduling).
• Agentic Data Engineering: Architect AI-centric ETL pipelines for data lakehouses enabling large-scale analytics.

Skills

Distributed systems

Golang

Go backend

CS fundamentals

Strong English

Data modeling

ETL pipelines

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/SE

Tools

gRPC

ConnectRPC

Trino

Kubernetes

DuckDB

PostgreSQL

Job description

About the Role

We're a fast-growing, well-funded AI-native analytics company (Series A/B equivalent) building an agentic data lakehouse that delivers trustworthy answers from messy enterprise data. Our platform helps organizations in highly regulated industries - including financial services and healthcare - query and reason over complex data using natural language, without heavy schema migrations or data movement.

What You'll Do

• Agentic Semantic Layer: Build the system that gives AI agents the context to query enterprise data correctly and the guardrails to prove their results - making AI-generated analytics something teams can actually stake decisions on.
• Distributed Agent Orchestration: Design and implement orchestration systems for agents that interact with the real world - including API integrations, rate limiting, OAuth passthrough, model routing, scheduling, and token optimization.
• Agentic Data Engineering: Architect AI-centric ETL pipelines for data lakehouses that make large-scale analytics possible for organizations with little to no dedicated data engineering resources.

What We're Looking For

Required:

• 4+ years of practical experience as a backend or platform engineer building scalable distributed systems
• Strong proficiency in Golang , with the ability to contribute across infrastructure, services, or frontend as needed
• Hands-on experience with gRPC/ConnectRPC, Trino, Kubernetes, DuckDB, and PostgreSQL in a distributed data platform environment
• Experience designing or implementing ETL pipelines, data modeling, or schema design for data platforms
• Experience building orchestration systems for distributed agents (API integrations, rate limiting, OAuth, model routing, scheduling, or token optimization)
• Prior experience at an early-stage startup, ideally building products from zero to one
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or comparable professional experience
• Strong CS fundamentals

Nice to Have:

• Experience with data visualization tools or big data technologies (Spark, Hadoop, or similar)
• Background at a VC-backed startup

Compensation & Benefits

Salary: $200,000 - $350,000 USD annually (depending on experience)

Equity participation

Visa sponsorship is available

Location

This role is on-site in New York City, NY . Candidates must be willing and able to work in-office full-time. Fully remote arrangements are not available for this position.