Software Engineer - Big Data (Compute/Data Distiller), Adobe Experience Platform

The Opportunity

From the moment you wake up until you go to bed, chances are that most of the media, ads, apps, websites and online shopping you interact with were touched by an Adobe product. Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) is the backbone that powers these experiences: it helps enterprises such as Verizon, Nike, AT&T and Disney centralize and standardize their customer data, build 360-degree customer profiles, and drive real-time personalized experiences. AEP processes terabytes to petabytes of data and serves billions of requests every day.

We are expanding our Compute / Data Distiller team in Bucharest. The team owns two core AEP capabilities:

• Data Distiller - a SQL engine on top of the AEP data lake that lets customers run interactive, batch and scheduled queries, accelerated queries, templates and alerts, and connect BI tools through the PostgreSQL protocol, to derive datasets, audiences and insights. We are also building AI agents that generate and personalize SQL from natural language.

• Compute Gateway - the multi-cloud, multi-engine compute layer that orchestrates data processing workloads with policy-based routing and support for long-running applications and jobs.

This position is for a key contributor who will help design modern data architectures and highly distributed cloud solutions, and take them all the way to production.

What You'll Do

• Design, build and operate complex features in a large-scale, multi-cloud, microservices-based SaaS product.
• Own the outcome: lead application, framework and service design efforts, optimizing for quality, testability, scalability and performance.
• Work on query execution, Spark SQL and query optimization, and the orchestration of compute workloads across multiple engines and clouds.
• Prototype new approaches and deliver production solutions at scale; research new technologies and keep up with industry trends.
• Partner with Product Management, Design, Data Science and engineering teams across domains, including our US counterparts on a shared roadmap.
• Provide guidance in architecture, design and code reviews; mentor teammates and promote good engineering practices and continuous learning.
• Take part in on-call activities on a follow-the-sun rotation with the rest of the team.
• Contribute to open-source projects where relevant.

What You Need to Succeed

• B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent engineering degree, and/or 3+ years of relevant experience building software systems.
• Strong programming skills in Java and/or Scala, with a solid grasp of OOP, functional programming and design patterns.
• Proven expertise with distributed data processing: Apache Spark (including Spark SQL), Databricks, Delta Lake or equivalent Lakehouse technologies.
• Good understanding of SQL, query engines and query optimization, table formats and schema evolution.
• Hands-on experience with performance optimization, large-scale cluster tuning and efficient big data architectures.
• Experience building scalable, resilient backend services and REST APIs.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS and/or Azure).
• Demonstrated experience delivering and operating a high-quality SaaS solution: testing, CI/CD, monitoring, infrastructure as code.
• Experience implementing observability best practices (monitoring, logging, tracing) in distributed systems.
• Ability to quickly learn new technologies, with an emphasis on using AI coding agents and the agentic ecosystem to boost productivity across the software lifecycle.
• A problem-solving mindset, able to diagnose root causes, plus a sharp eye for security issues and performance bottlenecks.
• Commitment to quality in both code and testing.
• Very good written and verbal communication skills in English.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker and infrastructure tooling (Terraform, ArgoCD).
• Experience with multiple compute engines or orchestration frameworks (e.g. Ray/Anyscale, Flink, YARN).
• Python, and experience building LLM-based agents or tools.
• Experience with Kafka, NoSQL databases (e.g. Cassandra, HBase) or Iceberg.
• Familiarity with PostgreSQL / JDBC protocols or BI tool integrations.
• Familiarity with monitoring tools such as Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana or New Relic.
• Experience with Agile / Scrum.

Why Join Us

• Solve hard distributed-systems problems at petabyte scale for some of the world’s largest brands.
• Work with cutting-edge technology: Spark, Databricks, Delta Lake, Ray and AI agents.
• Direct impact on the whole Adobe ecosystem, since AEP powers Adobe’s products.
• A growing team, a shared global roadmap and a follow-the-sun on-call model.

About Adobe

Adobe empowers everyone to create through innovative platforms and tools that unleash creativity, productivity and personalized customer experiences. Adobe’s industry-leading offerings including Adobe Acrobat Studio, Adobe Express, Adobe Firefly, Creative Cloud, Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Experience Manager, and GenStudio enable people and businesses to turn ideas into impact, powered by AI and driven by human ingenuity.

Our 30,000+ employees worldwide are creating the future and raising the bar as we drive the next decade of growth. We’re on a mission to hire the very best and believe in creating a company culture where all employees are empowered to make an impact. At Adobe, we believe that great ideas can come from anywhere in the organization. The next big idea could be yours.

Let’s Adobe together

At Adobe, we believe in creating a company culture where all employees are empowered to make an impact. Learn more about Adobe life, including our values and culture, focus on people, purpose and community, Adobe for All, comprehensive benefits programs, the stories we tell, the customers we serve, and how you can help us advance our mission of empowering everyone to create.

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