Staff Software Engineer, Product Data Platform

Brex; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 240,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Brex is hiring a Staff Software Engineer for the Product Data Platform (PDP) in San Francisco. You will shape technical direction across teams, optimize data and search infrastructure, and lead critical architecture decisions for scalable, production-grade systems.

Based in a hybrid SF office, you will mentor senior engineers and drive delivery with a focus on performance and reliability for Brex's data products and AI-enabled experiences.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of backend engineering experience
• Led architecture and delivery for large-scale distributed systems
• Deep hands-on with relational databases (Postgres/Aurora)
• Ability to drive ambiguous, cross-cutting problems to resolution
• Strong written and verbal communication
• Experience mentoring senior engineers

Responsibilities

• Lead technical strategy for PDP initiatives across multiple teams
• Resolve systemic performance, consistency, and scalability problems
• Own architecture direction for query performance and data access patterns
• Design and evolve distributed systems with tradeoffs around latency, caching and cost
• Raise the technical bar through design reviews and architecture decisions
• Identify scaling risks and reliability gaps and plan improvements
• Mentor senior engineers and cultivate next-gen leaders
• Contribute on high-stakes initiatives in the JVM ecosystem (Kotlin/Java)

Skills

Backend engineering

Architecture leadership

Relational databases

Cross-team collaboration

Mentoring

Communication

Tools

OpenSearch/Elasticsearch

Kafka

JVM (Kotlin/Java)

Job description

Why join us

Brex is the intelligent finance platform that enables companies to spend smarter and move faster in more than 200 markets. By combining global corporate cards and banking with intuitive spend management, bill pay, and travel software, Brex enables founders and finance teams to accelerate operations, gain real-time visibility, and control spend effortlessly. Brex’s AI-native automation and world-class service eliminate manual expense and accounting tasks for customers so they can focus on what matters most. Tens of thousands of the world's best companies run on Brex, including DoorDash, Coinbase, Robinhood, Zoom, Plaid, Reddit, and SeatGeek.

Working at Brex allows you to push your limits, challenge the status quo, and collaborate with some of the brightest minds in the industry. We’re committed to building a diverse team and inclusive culture and believe your potential should only be limited by how big you can dream. We make this a reality by empowering you with the tools, resources, and support you need to grow your career.

Engineering at Brex

Engineering at Brex is about building systems that scale with speed and intention. Our teams span Software, Data, Security, and IT, and operate with high autonomy and deep collaboration. We tackle hard technical problems, own our outcomes, and push for excellence at every level — from architecture to deployment. It’s an environment where engineering is a craft, and builders become leaders.

Where you’ll work

This role will be based in our San Francisco Office. We are a hybrid environment that combines the energy and connections of being in the office with the benefits and flexibility of working from home. We currently require a minimum of three coordinated days in the office per week, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.

As a perk, we also have up to four weeks per year of fully remote work!

What you’ll do

This opportunity is on our Product Data Platform (PDP) team, which builds and operates the high-performance data, query, and search infrastructure that powers critical Brex product experiences, including AI-powered data products like our agentic reporting experience. PDP's mission is to make Brex customizable, scalable, and reliable for finance teams, and that requires deeply optimized, production-grade distributed systems.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll shape the technical direction of the platform across multiple teams. Your mandate is to identify the highest-impact architectural problems across the data products group, including the cross-cutting ones that fall between teams, and drive them to resolution. You'll be accountable for the group's technical quality, move between long-horizon strategy and hands‑on execution, and lead through influence rather than authority.

Responsibilities:

• Lead technical strategy for critical PDP initiatives, balancing long-term architecture with near‑term delivery across multiple teams.
• Identify and resolve systemic performance, consistency, and scalability problems, including cross-team gaps no single team can own.
• Own architecture direction for query performance: query plans, execution paths, cost models, indexing strategies, and schema and access‑pattern design.
• Design and evolve distributed systems with thoughtful tradeoffs around consistency, latency, caching, cost, and failure modes.
• Raise the technical bar across the group through design reviews and architecture decisions, and dive in hands‑on where it matters most, including P95/P99 latency issues in production.
• Proactively identify scaling risks and reliability gaps, and turn findings into plans the group aligns behind.
• Mentor senior engineers and grow the next generation of technical leaders within PDP.
• Contribute directly on high‑stakes initiatives and critical path decisions, primarily in the JVM ecosystem (Kotlin/Java).

Requirements:

• 8+ years of backend engineering experience building and operating production systems at scale, including as a technical leader on multi‑team initiatives.
• Track record of leading architecture and delivery for large‑scale distributed systems in a platform or infrastructure environment.
• Deep hands‑on expertise with relational databases (Postgres or Aurora strongly preferred), including query plan analysis, indexing strategies, and real‑world optimization.
• Ability to drive ambiguous, cross‑cutting problems to resolution without a defined charter.
• Strong written and verbal communication, with the ability to influence stakeholders and align teams without direct authority.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers.

Bonus:

• Hands‑on experience with OpenSearch / Elasticsearch or similar systems in production.
• Experience with streaming data platforms (Flink, Kafka) or semantic/analytics layers in production.
• Experience with multi‑tenant or data‑heavy platforms in regulated environments.
• Experience building platform foundations for AI or agentic product experiences.

Compensation:

• The expected salary range for this role is $240,000 - $300,000. However, the starting base pay will depend on a number of factors including the candidate’s location, skills, experience, market demands, and internal pay parity.

Brex LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Capital One, N.A.

Please be aware, job‑seekers may be at risk of targeting by malicious actors looking for personal data. Brex recruiters will only reach out via LinkedIn or email with a brex.com domain. Any outreach claiming to be from Brex via other sources should be ignored.