Staff Engineer, Data Federation and Online Archive

MongoDB; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a forward-thinking company as a Staff Engineer, where you'll lead technical initiatives in system reliability and performance for a cutting-edge data platform. This role offers the chance to tackle complex challenges in distributed systems while mentoring talented engineers. You'll have a direct impact on thousands of customers relying on advanced data federation and archiving capabilities. If you're passionate about driving technical excellence and enjoy working in a collaborative environment, this opportunity is perfect for you.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience focused on backend systems.
• Strong background in distributed systems design and operational excellence.

Responsibilities

• Lead initiatives to improve system reliability and performance.
• Guide architectural decisions and mentor senior engineers.

Skills

Software Engineering

Backend Systems

Communication Skills

Systems Programming

Distributed Systems Design

Technical Leadership

Data Processing

Observability Practices

Tools

Kubernetes

Go

Java

Job description

MongoDB’s mission is to empower innovators to create, transform, and disrupt industries by unleashing the power of software and data. We enable organizations of all sizes to easily build, scale, and run modern applications by helping them modernize legacy workloads, embrace innovation, and unleash AI. Our industry-leading developer data platform, MongoDB Atlas, is the only globally distributed, multi-cloud database and is available in more than 115 regions across AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Atlas allows customers to build and run applications anywhere—on premises, or across cloud providers. With offices worldwide and over 175,000 new developers signing up to use MongoDB every month, it’s no wonder that leading organizations, like Samsung and Toyota, trust MongoDB to build next-generation, AI-powered applications.

About the Role

As a Staff Engineer on the Atlas Data Federation and Archiving team, you'll lead initiatives to drive technical excellence across our federated query system and data archival systems. You'll balance hands-on development with technical leadership, focusing on operational excellence, system reliability, and mentoring. This role offers the opportunity to solve complex distributed systems challenges at scale while improving the reliability and performance of business-critical systems. Your work will directly impact thousands of MongoDB Atlas customers who depend on our data federation and archiving capabilities for their critical business operations.

This role can be based out of our Austin, New York City, San Francisco, or Seattle office or remotely in the United States.

Key Responsibilities

System Reliability & Performance

• Lead initiatives to improve system observability, stability, and resource management
• Design and implement advanced autoscaling solutions for query execution and data processing
• Reduce incident rates through holistic improvements to system resilience
• Identify opportunities to improve operating costs in storage and query systems

Technical Leadership

• Guide architectural decisions and conduct design reviews across two engineering teams
• Mentor senior engineers in distributed systems design and operational excellence
• Collaborate with Product Management on technical roadmap development
• Drive cross-team technical initiatives and standards
• Participate in on-call rotation and provide senior oversight for incident response and postmortem retrospectives

Systems Development

• Design and implement improvements to our distributed query execution engine
• Optimize data archival pipelines for increased throughput, durability and reliability
• Design and implement solutions for single-tenant isolation requirements

Candidate Profile

• 10+ years software engineering, primarily focused on backend systems
• Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical concepts with clarity and build consensus through evidence-based persuasion
• Strong systems programming background; Go and Java experience a plus (but not required)
• Extensive experience designing and operating distributed systems at scale; Kubernetes experience is a plus (but not required)
• Track record of improving system reliability and operational excellence
• Experience with large-scale data processing or storage systems (e.g. data lake technologies, distributed databases, disaggregated storage, etc.)
• Knowledge of modern observability practices and tools
• Proven ability to lead technical initiatives as an individual contributor
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and driving technical excellence within a team