Server C++ Engineer (Security & Distributed Systems)

ClickHouse is one of the world’s leading open-source analytic databases, and Altinity is the home of ClickHouse experts who build real-time data solutions that run anywhere.

Altinity is looking for a strong server internals engineer to help develop ClickHouse and maintain its security, reliability, and performance. As a Server Engineer, you will design, implement, and support features across storage, query processing, distributed execution, authentication, and cloud integration. You will also contribute to Altinity’s active development roadmap, which may include work on making data lake catalogs work naturally with ClickHouse, improving performance on cloud object storage, or evolving stateless distributed query execution. Alongside new development, you will help to deliver secure, carefully tested releases for demanding production environments.

Security is an important part of this role. You will help identify, analyze, validate, and resolve vulnerabilities affecting ClickHouse and its dependencies. You will work closely with Altinity engineering teams, customers, and the open-source community to ensure issues are understood and addressed quickly and correctly.

Our ideal candidate has:

• Proven experience designing, implementing, and testing high-performance server or database features in a complex C++ codebase.
• A strong understanding of database internals, including experience with one or more of query processing, columnar storage, indexing and pruning, metadata management, replication, or distributed execution.
• Demonstrated ability to read, write, debug, and review modern C++.
• Good knowledge of Linux networking, concurrency, memory management, and I/O.
• Experience in at least one area relevant to Altinity’s roadmap: cloud object storage; open data-lake formats and catalogs; distributed task execution; or separation of compute and storage. You understand challenges such as latency, caching, consistency and failure recovery.
• Experience investigating difficult correctness, performance, or reliability problems and turning them into reproducible, well-tested fixes.
• Ability to assess vulnerabilities in large software systems and dependency chains, reproduce reported issues, determine impact and severity, and develop responsible, testable fixes.
• Familiarity with common server vulnerability classes and secure development practices, including memory safety, denial of service, authentication and authorization, information disclosure, and software supply-chain risk.
• Familiarity with performance analysis and debugging tools, including profilers and sanitizers.
• A history of contributing changes through pull requests and code review in rapidly evolving projects; open-source experience is especially valuable.
• The ability to investigate ambiguous technical problems independently, communicate decisions clearly, and collaborate asynchronously with a globally distributed team.
• Enthusiasm for database technology, open-source development, and learning new systems.
• MAJOR PLUS: Previous ClickHouse development experience, contributions to a database or storage engine, hands-on work with technologies such as Apache Iceberg, S3-compatible storage, or distributed query systems.

A day in your life as a ClickHouse server engineer may include any or all of the following:

• Write good task-specific C++ code and solidify it with tests
• Debug issues reported by users, fix them and add tests to make sure they won’t happen again
• Profile existing code and make it faster (either by applying clever algorithms, adding vectorized intrinsics, or by implementing cool tricks), add performance tests
• Submit your own pull requests and review pull requests from others
• Help the Support Team investigate customer problems running ClickHouse
• Help new community members contribute to ClickHouse
• Attend meetups and make presentations on open-source development
• Write blog articles and share information about ClickHouse

Our Benefits:

• Work from Anywhere, Anytime: We are not your typical nine-to-five shop! Enjoy the flexibility of working from literally wherever and whenever. Create a schedule that works for you and your family or lifestyle. Recharge your batteries with our open vacation policies.
• Cultural Diversity: We love that we get to work with passionate people from around the world. Currently, our team is made of professionals from 25 different countries!
• Career Development: We provide opportunities to learn new technologies as well as try out new roles. We also offer access to training on leading-edge technologies, plus flexible work schedules for external education.
• USA Employees Benefits: We offer comprehensive PPO health care plans for our US-based employees that are incredibly flexible to meet the needs of individuals or families. 401K with company match also available.
• Company Travel: We come together in person two to three times per year in locations across the globe.

  We also fund travel to conferences and encourage presentations as well as contributions to open-source communities.

This is a full-time position and includes equity in the company.

Altinity is venture-funded and financially stable.

We are 100% remote. You may work anywhere you have work permits.

Check out our many other benefits including flexible work hours, career development, and open vacation policies.

We are eager to meet you!