Software Engineer, Data Systems

gamma.app; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 310,000; Full time

Job summary

Gamma is seeking a data engineer to own our end-to-end event pipeline and data infrastructure as we scale to hundreds of millions of users. You will define the technical strategy for our data stack, architect distributed systems, and drive data-driven decision making across analytics, product, and engineering leadership.

You will balance hands-on engineering with technical leadership, mentor engineers, and help shape our data platform as we support massive growth and a high-velocity SaaS

Qualifications

• Ten or more years as a data or software engineer with distributed systems and SaaS scale.
• Proven experience building data infrastructure at scale and leading initiatives.
• Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end event pipeline architecture from ingestion to analytics.
• Design distributed data systems that scale while preserving query performance.
• Lead CDC pipelines and streaming transformations at massive scale.
• Set data modeling, infrastructure architecture, and technology direction.
• Establish data quality, reliability, and observability practices.
• Mentor engineers and elevate data practices across teams.

Skills

Distributed systems

Data infrastructure

Kafka

Snowflake

Postgres

CDC patterns

dbt

Terraform

Security best practices

Communication

Tools

Kafka Connect

Terraform

dbt

Job description

We're building the creative layer for modern communication. Every month, over a billion people make presentations — but the tools they use to make them haven't evolved in decades. We're changing that, using AI to disrupt a massive market.

Miles of people rely on Gamma to create, teach, and persuade, creating more than 1 million gammas every day.

We see Gamma as the next great workplace tool, combining viral B2C love with a massive B2B opportunity. We believe AI can be a true creative partner: one that understands context, clarity, and taste.

We’ve reached a $2.1B valuation, crossed $100M in annual recurring revenue, and have been profitable since 2023.

We're an imaginative, passionate team who takes our work seriously, but not ourselves. Our culture is warm, a little quirky, and fueled by curiosity.

About the role

You'll own Gamma's data infrastructure and architecture as we scale to hundreds of millions of users and petabytes of data. This means defining the technical strategy for our end-to-end event pipeline architecture, designing distributed systems that handle massive scale with reliability, and establishing the foundation for how data flows through Gamma. You'll solve the hardest data engineering challenges we face while setting the technical direction for data infrastructure across the company.

As a Data Engineer, you'll balance hands-on engineering with technical leadership. You'll architect solutions for orders of magnitude growth, mentor engineers across the organization, and drive strategic decisions about our data stack. You'll work closely with analytics, product, and engineering leadership to enable data-driven decision making at scale while building systems that serve millions of users and inform critical business decisions.

Our team has a strong in-office culture and works in person 4–5 days per week in San Francisco. We love working together to stay creative and connected, with flexibility to work from home when focus matters most.

What you'll do

• Own and evolve our end-to-end event pipeline architecture, from Kafka ingestion through Snowflake analytics, setting technical direction for data infrastructure
• Design and architect distributed data systems that scale to orders of magnitude more data volume while maintaining world-class query performance
• Lead initiatives to build and optimize CDC (change data capture) pipelines and streaming data transformations at massive scale
• Establish best practices for data quality, pipeline reliability, and system observability across the organization
• Drive strategic technical decisions about data modeling, infrastructure architecture, and technology choices
• Mentor engineers and elevate data engineering practices across analytics, product, and engineering teams

What you'll bring

• 10+ years as a data or software engineer with deep expertise in distributed systems, data infrastructure, and high-growth SaaS products at massive scale
• Expert-level knowledge of Apache Kafka (producers, consumers, Kafka Connect, stream processing) and event streaming platforms
• Extensive hands-on experience with Snowflake, including performance optimization, cost management, and data modeling; strong foundation in Postgres, CDC patterns, and replication strategies
• Proven track record architecting and leading major data infrastructure initiatives through orders-of-magnitude growth
• Experience establishing best practices and driving technical strategy across organizations
• Strong communication skills with a history of influencing technical direction across engineering, analytics, and leadership
• Proficiency with dbt, Terraform, and working knowledge of data governance, privacy compliance (GDPR, CCPA), and security best practices

Compensation range

The base salary for this full-time position, which spans multiple internal levels depending on qualifications, ranges between $230K - $310K plus benefits & equity.

The final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including but not limited to experience and expertise in the requirements listed above.

We're building on a full Typescript stack centered around some of the most modern and popular technologies.

• We use our own custom AI prompting framework using JSX. We have a lot of custom tools built in-house, but also new ones like Vercel AI SDK.

Our tiny team operates at massive scale

1 million

6 million

AI images generated daily

1 trillion

LLM tokens processed per month

Life at Gamma

• You get energy from small teams doing big things.
• You love when design, code, and storytelling overlap.
• You default to action, even when the answer isn't clear yet.
• You value details, but know when to ship and move on.
• You bring both the spreadsheets and the sparkle, equal parts workhorse and unicorn.
• You believe AI should amplify creativity, not replace it.
• You know kindness and intensity are not opposites.
• You like working with people who care deeply: about their craft, their teammates, and the users on the other side of the screen.

Who we are

Gamma is full of imaginative, passionate people who take their work seriously but not themselves. The culture is warm, a little quirky, and fueled by curiosity. It’s the kind of place where you’ll debate a pixel on Monday, laugh over someone’s keyboard setup on Tuesday, and ship something remarkable by Friday.

We care about craft, move with intention, and don’t mind getting a little scrappy. It’s fast, creative, and occasionally chaotic — but that’s what makes it interesting.

Here’s a bit about what it’s like to work here, from people on the inside

• "quirky, inspiring, fun, a little wild in the best way"
• "You can have an idea and just run with it."
• "Everyone’s talented and humble — the mix keeps you sharp."
• "We ship cool stuff, learn a ton, and laugh a lot doing it."

Meet the team

We're a team of dreamers and doers building in beautiful San Francisco

We're kabbadi enthusiasts, pickleballers, dog herders, woodworkers, keyboard nerds, potters, and more — and we can't wait to meet you!