Software Engineer - PlanetScale Postgres

PlanetScale is growing rapidly and reinventing the database space. The PlanetScale platform delivers a fully managed, multi-cloud Postgres service designed for the most demanding production workloads. We handle the complexity of provisioning, scaling, replication, and failover - so engineering teams can focus on building their products.

Our customers entrust us with their most precious digital asset, their data, so the stakes couldn't be higher. We're looking for a Software Engineer to join our Postgres engineering team and help us build a world-class managed Postgres offering.

What's the job to be done?

• You will design and build the control plane that provisions, scales, and heals Postgres clusters with minimal customer-visible downtime.
• You will build and maintain high availability, disaster recovery, and data protection solutions that keep customer databases safe through infrastructure failures.
• You will tune Postgres to operate at scale for some of the largest and most demanding workloads in the world.
• You will build tooling and automation for database operations, backup, restore, and migration workflows - and participate in an on-call rotation.
• You will work directly with customers to understand their workloads and translate real-world needs into platform improvements.

These attributes best describe you…

• You have strong experience building, operating, or maintaining large-scale Postgres deployments in production.
• You have an excellent understanding of low-level operating systems concepts including multi-threading, memory management, networking, storage, and performance.
• You have strong fundamental computer science skills and can reason about distributed, fault-tolerant systems.
• You thrive in a collaborative environment, enjoy mentoring other engineers, and communicate complex technical tradeoffs clearly.
• You are self-motivated and can work independently with minimal guidance while making sound technical decisions.

What you will need

• 5+ years of software engineering experience designing, building, and supporting large-scale systems in production.
• Strong proficiency in Go, with experience in other languages like Ruby, Python, Zig or Rust.
• Experience building and maintaining distributed, fault-tolerant services.
• Working knowledge of Kubernetes and containerized applications.
• Experience building and operating distributed systems at scale.

What else will help you be successful

• Experience building or operating a database-as-a-service or managed database platform.
• Experience with connection pooling and proxy layers for Postgres.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and infrastructure-as-code.
• Contributions to open-source projects, especially in the Postgres or database infrastructure space.
• Experience working with remote, geographically distributed teams.
• Previous experience at a high-growth technology company.

Why PlanetScale

We're redefining how high-growth companies manage data at scale—and we work with some of the most exciting brands in gaming, consumer tech, and B2B SaaS. As a Software Engineer, you'll be at the core of building the platform that powers world-class apps used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide. PlanetScale is a profitable company with a philosophy centered around building small teams of p99 individuals and is recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in America.

At PlanetScale we believe in supporting people to do their best work and thrive no matter the location. Our mission is to build a diverse, equitable, and inclusive company. We strive to build an inclusive environment where all people feel that they are equally respected and valued, whether they are a candidate or an employee. We welcome applicants of any educational background, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, citizenship, socioeconomic status, disability, pregnancy status, and veteran status.

If you have a disability, please let us know if there's any way we can make the interview process better for you; we're happy to accommodate!

Total Compensation and Pay Transparency

An employee's total compensation consists of base salary + variable comp where appropriate + benefits + equity. A member of our Talent Acquisition team will be happy to answer any further questions when we engage with you to begin the interview process.

Base salary range: $120,000 - $290,000 USD

• Make sure you have a strong understanding of Postgres and experience with large-scale database systems before applying for this role.
• Highlight your experience with Go and other relevant programming languages in your application materials.
• Be prepared to discuss your experience with distributed systems and fault-tolerant services in your interview.
• Emphasize your ability to communicate complex technical trade-offs clearly and effectively.
• Research Planetscale's company culture and values to understand how you can contribute to the team's mission and goals.
• Prepare to discuss your experience with Kubernetes, containerized applications, and cloud platforms.
• Show examples of your work, such as open-source contributions or personal projects, to demonstrate your skills and experience.