Staff Backend Engineer

About the role

Design, build, and operate backend systems that process and store large volumes of real-time telemetry data.

• Own features end-to-end, from design to post-launch improvement.
• Collaborate with Frontend, Design, and Data teams to ensure features solve real customer problems.
• Optimize backend systems for performance, scalability, and reliability.
• Contribute to system evolution—migrating services, introducing caches, and improving storage or indexing layers.
• Participate in on-call rotations, debugging live issues, and improving observability.
• Raise the bar through code reviews, shared patterns, and mentorship.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, or another STEM discipline
• 7+ years of experience in backend or infrastructure roles
• Strong understanding of distributed systems fundamentals—state, fault tolerance, recovery.
• Experience with Go, Rust, or Python, and strong Linux/networking fundamentals.
• Deep knowledge of SQL and operational database experience (indexing, migrations, tuning).
• Experience building and scaling APIs (REST, gRPC/Protobuf).
• Strong debugging skills and a production-first mindset.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, Prometheus, Argo CD, and other modern infrastructure tools.

Nice to have

• Experience with streaming or time-series data systems (Kafka, Flink, TimescaleDB, etc.).
• Experience with performance tuning and profiling at query or service layers.
• Familiarity with observability tools (Datadog, Grafana).
• Background in hardware or telemetry-heavy environments.

About the team

You’ll join a tight-knit team of world-class engineers building foundational systems for next-gen machines. Technologies you'll work with may include:

• Frontend & Backend: Go, gRPC, PostgreSQL, Protobuf, React, TypeScript
• Data Infrastructure: Apache Arrow, DataFusion, Flink, Kafka, Parquet, Rust
• Ops & Tooling: AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, GitHub Actions, Prometheus, Argo CD, Grafana, Linux

Location

Sift’s headquarters is in Marina Del Rey, CA (next to LAX). We collaborate in person twice a week—on Mondays and Thursdays—and come together for a full week every two months. We are open to relocating candidates to LA or working from our San Francisco office for the right candidate.

Pay

Salary range: $200,000 - $260,000 per year, plus equity and benefits.

Eligibility

U.S. Person Required: Must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual such as an asylee or refugee in compliance with ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) / EAR (Export Administration Regulations) regulations.