Staff Software Engineer, Database Infrastructure

About the Role:

We're looking for an experienced engineer with deep expertise in distributed data systems to shape the future of Gusto's storage layer. You'll manage complex migrations, architect high-scale systems, and set standards for automation, resiliency, and security. This is a high-impact role where you'll implement distributed database solutions that enable Gusto's continued growth and scale.

About the Team:

The Datastores Infrastructure Engineering team designs, builds, and operates the data platforms that power Gusto's product: MySQL, Postgres, Redis, Kafka, and S3. We ensure our infrastructure is consistent, reliable, and ready to support Gusto's growing needs. As we transition to self-hosted distributed databases, the team is focused on reducing blast radius, improving operational resilience, and enabling sustainable scale.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Architect, deploy, and own the full lifecycle of distributed database systems (TiDB) on Kubernetes at scale, ensuring high availability, data consistency, and operational excellence
• Coordinate complex, zero-downtime migrations from monolithic to distributed architectures, including vertical sharding to isolate Product Services
• Define and drive efficiency improvements across the storage infrastructure through query optimization, caching strategies, and workload management
• Define standards and build reliable automation to ensure data consistency, integrity, and security across distributed systems
• Continuously improve operational excellence by reducing on-call burden through sustainable, long-term solutions
• Partner with product engineering teams and technical collaborators to enable rapid and reliable product development
• Mentor engineers across the Datastores Infrastructure team on best practices for operating complex, self-hosted distributed systems, actively developing our collective operational expertise

Here’s what we're looking for:

• 12+ years of software engineering experience building and scaling large-scale infrastructure systems
• Hands-on experience building and operating distributed databases on Kubernetes (strongly preferred: TiDB; alternatively: CockroachDB, Vitess, Citus, or similar solutions)
• Deep expertise in distributed data systems including horizontal sharding, partitioning strategies, and distributed transaction management
• Proven experience coordinating complex, zero-downtime migrations affecting production systems at scale
• 5+ years of AWS experience with RDS, Aurora, caching systems (Redis/ValKey), streaming platforms (Kafka), and infrastructure optimization at scale
• Strong communication skills with the ability to simplify technical complexity and collaborate on technical direction across teams
• Curiosity and ability to operate in an AI-native environment, leveraging AI tooling to enhance infrastructure operations, driving improvements in query optimization, performance evaluation, and infrastructure automation
• Bonus: Experience with service extraction and vertical sharding from monolithic architectures
• Bonus: Experience working with Ruby on Rails or similar MVC frameworks at scale

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $200,000-$230,000 /yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $230,000-$270,000 /yr for San Francisco, Seattle & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.