Senior Backend Engineer (Distributed Systems and SQL Query Engines)

Experience: 5+ years in Software/Backend Engineering
Specialization: BigQuery (GCP) or Databricks (Spark/Lakehouse)

About the Company
Our client is a US-based technology company developing an innovative data platform that helps businesses optimize analytical workloads and significantly reduce cloud data processing costs.
The company builds intelligent technology that enables organizations to execute analytical queries more efficiently across different data engines, without major changes to their existing applications or data infrastructure.
The engineering team works on challenging problems involving distributed systems, SQL processing, and modern cloud data platforms.

About the Role
We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to help develop and extend a distributed SQL query-processing platform.
You will work on backend services responsible for integrating analytical database engines, routing queries, and ensuring reliable execution across different environments.
We are considering engineers with expertise in either Google BigQuery/GCP or Databricks/Spark. Experience with both is not required.
This is a software engineering position with a strong focus on backend architecture and database integrations.

Key Requirements
Backend Engineering & Distributed Systems
5+ years of professional software/backend engineering experience.
Strong experience building reliable, scalable distributed services.
Solid understanding of concurrency, fault tolerance, and error handling.
Python development experience is highly desirable.

BigQuery or Databricks Expertise
Ideally 2–3+ years of hands-on experience with one of the following:
Google BigQuery and GCP, or
Databricks, Apache Spark, and Lakehouse technologies.
Experience working with analytical workloads and integrating data-processing platforms.

SQL & Query Processing
Strong SQL skills and understanding of analytical database engines.
Familiarity with SQL dialect differences and engine-specific behavior.
Experience with query optimization, database integrations, or SQL workload processing.

What You’ll Do
Design and develop distributed backend services.
Build integrations with BigQuery or Databricks.
Contribute to intelligent SQL query-routing functionality.
Work on compatibility and reliability across analytical database engines.
Improve query execution workflows and failure handling.
Collaborate with the engineering team on architecture and platform improvements.

Nice to Have
SQL parsing, AST manipulation, or query-planning experience.
Knowledge of database/query-engine internals.
Experience with Apache Arrow, Iceberg, or Delta Lake.
Query routing, SQL gateways, or database proxy development.
Experience with Snowflake, DuckDB, or ClickHouse.
Previous experience migrating analytical workloads between engines

MUST-HAVE REQUIREMENTS:
Backend Engineering & Distributed Systems – 5+ years of experience in backend engineering, including at least 1 year of hands-on experience with distributed systems.
BigQuery (GCP) OR Databricks (Spark/Lakehouse) – 2+ years of practical experience with at least one of these platforms.
SQL & Query Engine Integration – 2+ years of experience working with SQL dialects, query processing, and analytical engine integration.
Working hours: Must be available to work until 11:00 AM PST.