{"id":1246828,"url":"https://alion.io/job/palantir-technologies-software-engineer-query-engines-2","title":"Software Engineer – Query Engines","company":{"id":24,"name":"Palantir Technologies","domain":"palantir.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/palantir","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Lever","truth_index":{"grade":"C","score":60,"open_postings":240,"ghost_share":0.583,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":112,"computed_at":"2026-10-06T05:45:30Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"middle","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["London, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":73000,"max_usd":162000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":27},"experience_years_min":4,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Apache Iceberg","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Java","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false},{"name":"Scala","optional":false},{"name":"Spark","optional":false},{"name":"GitHub","optional":true},{"name":"Gradle","optional":true},{"name":"Python","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-22T11:06:34Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-22","last_verified_at":"2026-10-06T22:05:31Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":14,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":13},"description":"The Role\nWe are a software engineering team applying open-source data technologies to some of the world’s hardest and most important problems. We build the data processing infrastructure that underpins Palantir Foundry, supporting applications that help hospitals care for more patients, help clinical teams coordinate timely diagnoses, and keep essential supplies moving through global disruption.\nYou will work deep inside the systems that make this possible: how computations are represented, how query plans are optimized, how operators execute, and how data is read and written efficiently. We build on and extend Apache Spark, Apache DataFusion, and Apache Iceberg, bringing advances in open-source engines and table formats into the demanding environments our customers operate in. Our work serves many products and workloads across Foundry, including no-code pipelines, interactive analysis, and the processing that keeps the Ontology up to date.\nYou will own improvements from design through production, whether that means developing a planning rule, extending a native execution engine, or improving the way large tables are scanned and updated. Correctness, compatibility, and predictable performance are central to everything we build. A change in a shared engine can benefit applications across the platform and the people who rely on them.\nJoin us if you want to advance the capabilities of modern data systems and apply that work to consequential problems.\nTechnologies We Use\nJava, Scala, Rust, and Python\nApache Spark, Apache DataFusion, Apache Comet, and Velox for data processing and query execution\nApache Iceberg for table management and catalog interoperability\nApache Arrow and Apache Parquet for in-memory data processing and columnar storage\nIndustry-standard build tooling, including Gradle, Cargo, and GitHub.\nCore Responsiblities\nDesigning and implementing query planning and optimization capabilities that turn complex computations into efficient execution plans\nExtending execution engines with new capabilities and improving query operators, parallelism, memory management, and data movement\nDeveloping Foundry’s Iceberg catalog and engine integrations, including table metadata, transactions, and efficient reads and writes\nBuilding shared transformation semantics and execution interfaces for workloads across Foundry’s products and platform services\nImproving incremental processing so pipelines can reuse previous results and process new data efficiently while preserving correctness\nEvaluating and integrating advances in open-source data systems, validating their behavior and performance against real-world workloads\nInvestigating correctness and performance issues across planning, execution, and storage, and building tests and benchmarks that prevent regressions\nWorking with product teams and customers to translate operational needs into engine capabilities that integrate with Foundry’s security, data management, and build infrastructure\nWhat We Value\nOwnership mindset and a high bar for correctness. Our systems support decisions and operations that customers depend on.\nCuriosity about how data systems work, from query optimizers and execution operators to table formats and distributed processing.\nStrong debugging skills and motivation to follow a problem across languages, services, and layers of the stack.\nA practical approach to performance, grounded in profiling, representative workloads, and measurable improvements.\nInterest in applying deep systems engineering to real-world problems, with empathy for the people who use and depend on our software.\nExperience building or extending systems such as Spark, DataFusion, Iceberg, or comparable technologies, and an interest in learning across the stack.\nAbility to collaborate across teams and work effectively with the open-source projects we build on. Experience contributing to open-source projects is valued, but not required.\nWhat We Require\n4+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating production systems.\nEngineering background in Computer Science, Mathematics, Software Engineering, Physics, or a similar field, or equivalent practical experience.\nStrong coding skills with demonstrated proficiency in one or more languages such as Java, Rust, Scala, or C++.\nExperience developing database engines, distributed data processing systems, storage systems, or comparable infrastructure, with depth in areas such as query planning, execution, or performance optimization.\nStrong foundations in algorithms, data structures, and concurrency, with experience diagnosing correctness and performance problems in complex systems.\nStrong written and verbal communication skills and the ability to work effectively across teams, incorporate feedback, and hold a high bar for quality.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4819,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":4,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Data Integration & ETL Tools","Decision Intelligence","Defense AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-25T17:51:25Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"GB","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"Licensed UK visa sponsor (Senior or Specialist Worker, Skilled Worker)","filings_12m":null,"filings_prev_12m":null,"green_card_filings_12m":null,"median_offered_wage_usd":null,"route":"Global Business Mobility: Senior or Specialist Worker; Skilled Worker","cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-06T06:21:00+00:00","sources":["UK Home Office: register of licensed sponsors (workers)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":63,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.632,"p_room":1,"age_days":13,"expected_fill_days":112,"reasons":["conf:0","stale_co","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-06T05:45:30Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/palantir-technologies-software-engineer-query-engines-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/palantir-technologies-software-engineer-query-engines-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-06T22:58:15Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":3776,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":1224,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-10-07T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":24},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=24"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fpalantir-technologies-software-engineer-query-engines-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fpalantir-technologies-software-engineer-query-engines-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fpalantir-technologies-software-engineer-query-engines-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/palantir-technologies-software-engineer-query-engines-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fpalantir-technologies-software-engineer-query-engines-2"}]}