Staff Software Engineer, Distributed Data Services - Slack

Leadout Capital; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Slack is building and operating scalable, highly available backend services that power its largest customers and enterprise features. The Distributed Data Services Team focuses on edge caches, data residency, and secure, reliable infrastructure that keeps Slack running seamlessly at scale.

The team values practical, customer‑first reliability and a strong culture of testing, documentation, and thoughtful architecture.

Qualifications

• 10+ years building and operating large-scale systems.
• Hands-on experience managing critical production infrastructure with high uptime.
• Deep experience with reliable distributed systems and the judgment to weigh engineering vs. product trade-offs.
• Strong fundamentals in unit testing, code review, design documentation, debugging, and troubleshooting.
• A curious, determined mindset that gets energized by things breaking.

Skills

10+ years experience building large‑sc

Production infrastructure management

Distributed systems fundamentals

Unit testing & code reviews

Debugging & Troubleshooting

Architectural decision making

Customer‑first reliability

Problem‑solving mindset

Tools

Go programming language exposure

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

About the Opportunity:

We operate at tremendous scale with systems that process millions of events per second. Our team maintains and builds performant services that that include:

• Edge Caches
• Enterprise Key Management
• International Data Residency
• Image Uploads, Downloads, and Proxying

We've done our job correctly when none of our users think about us, much like a vital utility. We don't typically ship new user-facing features, but rather ensure our systems are exceptionally performant, highly available, reliable, and scalable. In other words, we make Slack work seamlessly. Slack's backend services are written in Go and Java, and Slack's API is built on PHP/Hack.

The Distributed Data Services Team

We are a small team building critical services that enable Slack to scale for our largest customers. Our edge caches power the most latency critical queries for our largest entities today. Our other services power Slack's Enterprise Key Management and Data Residency features.

We power core Slack functionality such as shared channels, our privacy-preserving image proxy, and many other key day-to-day parts of our customer's experience. We have a strong commitment to quality and understand that simplicity and reliability are the foundations of our work.

We are actively building the future of edge services at Slack, so we can support a growing number of globally distributed customers with their compliance requirements with minimal latency.

What you should have:

• U.S. Citizenship or Permanent Residency required - we're unable to provide visa sponsorship for this role.
• 10+ years building and operating large-scale systems professionally, with concrete examples of what you've shipped and owned.
• Hands-on experience managing critical production infrastructure - driving reliability and uptime with a customer-first view of operational safety.
• Deep experience with reliable, safe distributed systems, and the judgment to weigh engineering vs. product trade-offs and argue persuasively for either.
• A track record of untangling complex issues that demand deep knowledge of a company's existing architecture.
• Strong fundamentals in unit testing, code review, design documentation, debugging, and troubleshooting - you've built and operated web applications professionally and can speak in depth about what you and your teams have delivered.
• A curious, determined mindset that gets energized (not deterred) by things breaking.

Bonus points:

• Go programming language exposure.
• AWS
• Building and releasing software with Docker containers
• Kubernetes
• Experience in highly regulated environments where FEDRAMP/NIST frameworks were essential.

Distributed Data Services is a diverse and inclusive team that is building the future of Slack's infrastructure. We are happy to help you learn what you need to know; we encourage and support each other's growth and it's not expected that you would have expertise across all of these areas from the beginning.