Software Engineer, Collections Infra

Notion; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Notion is seeking a Software Engineer for Collections Infra to scale the database block infrastructure for high concurrency and enterprise deployments. You will work between infrastructure and product teams to improve performance, reliability, and the platform that other Notion teams build on.

We value engineers who learn quickly, reason from first principles, and use AI as a real engineering partner to accelerate debugging, testing, and optimization.

Qualifications

• Strong backend fundamentals focused on performance, reliability, and scalability.
• Curiosity about distributed systems and trade-offs in data layers.
• Practical comfort with JavaScript or TypeScript and fast ramp in codebases.

Responsibilities

• Scale infrastructure behind the database block for larger enterprise workloads.
• Improve database performance and reliability at high concurrency.
• Collaborate between infrastructure and product to enable platform reuse by other teams.
• Contribute to observability, architecture, and system boundaries for future work.
• Partner with senior engineers and product teams to evolve Collections as a platform.

Skills

Backend

Distributed systems

JavaScript/TypeScript

Problem solving

Learning mindset

Job description

Who We Are

Notion is the collaborative AI workspace where teams and agents think together. We're building one place where your knowledge, projects, meetings, and AI tools live side by side, so work is faster, clearer, and less fragmented. Millions of individuals, small teams, and large companies run their work on Notion.

Notinos (our employees) are customer zero in bringing this future of work to life. We care about craft, building things that last, and the belief that great work is still fundamentally human. Our goal isn't to ship the next feature. Each and every team of Notinos is working to set the standard for how humans work together in the AI era. From building a business's system of record to making and managing AI agents to automating away the busy work, we care deeply about giving our customers more time for their life's work.

About The Role

As a Software Engineer on Collections Infra, you'll help scale the infrastructure behind Notion's database block. Databases power views, boards, charts, forms, and the workflows customers use to run their companies; as Notion grows into larger enterprise deployments and AI-native work, those systems need to become faster, more reliable, and ready for much higher concurrency. This team sits between infrastructure and product, building backend architecture that improves the customer experience while becoming a platform other Notion teams can build on. You'll work on problems like database load performance, microservices, high-volume writes from agents, and the flexibility that makes Notion databases powerful and hard to scale.

This role can be based in either San Francisco or New York City. We work from our offices on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays (our Anchor Days) because we do our best thinking and building together in person. We're looking for someone who's excited to work alongside the team during those days.

What You'll Achieve

• By your 90th day, you'll understand how Collections Infra supports Notion's database block, ship improvements to database performance or reliability, and build context on the scale challenges behind larger enterprise workspaces and AI-driven write volume.
• You'll use AI as a real engineering collaborator: to learn unfamiliar systems faster, explore debugging paths, generate tests, summarize traces or logs, and pressure-test implementation plans before shipping.
• You'll contribute to the team's work to make databases faster and more reliable at P95 scale, especially as customers build larger centralized databases with more concurrent usage.
• By the end of your first year, you'll have helped raise the quality bar for Collections infrastructure through better architecture, observability, documentation, or system boundaries that make future work easier to build on.
• You'll partner with senior engineers and product-facing teams to evolve Collections as a platform, balancing internal developer needs with the external customer experience of databases.

Skills You'll Need To Bring

• Strong backend engineering fundamentals, with interest in performance, reliability, scalability, and systems that need to hold up under real customer load.
• Curiosity about distributed systems, microservices, and data-layer trade-offs; experience in these areas is helpful, but we care most about your ability to learn quickly and reason from first principles.
• Practical comfort with JavaScript or TypeScript, or the ability to ramp quickly in a codebase where those tools matter.
• Grit and truth-seeking in technical problem solving: you can iterate when the first approach does not move P50/P95 performance, and you're motivated by finding the real bottleneck.
• A self-guided learning style: you use docs, code, teammates, and AI to build context, ask better questions, and turn ambiguity into steady progress.

Notion is committed to providing highly competitive cash compensation, equity, and benefits. The compensation offered for this role will be based on multiple factors such as location, the role's scope and complexity, and the candidate's experience and expertise, and may vary from the range provided below. For roles based in San Francisco or New York City, the estimated base salary range for this role is $150,000 - $200,000 per year.

A Note on AI

You don't need deep AI expertise for every role, but we do expect every Notino to be intellectually curious, drawn to tinkering and discovery, and excited to use AI as a real collaborator in their work. For some roles, AI fluency is a core requirement – when that's the case, we'll say so explicitly in the qualifications. People who thrive here don't treat AI as a novelty. They use it to think better, and make their work easier for others to build on.

Equal Opportunity & Accommodations

We hire talented people from a wide range of backgrounds. If you're excited about this role but don't meet every bullet, we still encourage you to apply. Notion is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of any legally protected characteristic. Consistent with applicable law, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. Notion provides reasonable accommodations during the application process; if you need one, please let your recruiter know.

Notion is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Notion considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Notion is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please let your recruiter know.