Staff Software Engineer, Data

At SIFT, we’re redefining how modern machines are built, tested, and operated. Our platform gives engineers real-time observability over high-frequency telemetry—eliminating bottlenecks and enabling faster, more reliable development.

SIFT was born from our work at SpaceX on Dragon, Falcon, Starlink, and Starship—where scaling telemetry, debugging flight systems, and ensuring mission reliability demanded new infrastructure. Founded by a team from SpaceX, Google, and Palantir, SIFT is built for mission-critical systems where precision and scalability are non-negotiable.

As an early engineer focused on our data infrastructure, you won’t just write code—you’ll define core architecture and help scale a real-time telemetry platform from the ground up. You’ll work on complex backend systems designed to ingest, store, and serve millions of high-frequency data points per second, enabling faster iteration cycles for some of the most advanced engineering teams in the world.

IN THIS ROLE, YOU'LL:

- Design and build a horizontally scalable platform for ingesting millions of hardware sensor data points per second

- Develop durable, efficient database solutions to support real-time reads and large-scale analytics workloads

- Pioneer data architecture by integrating recent innovations in streaming and storage, including cloud-native and diskless designs

- Help define engineering culture, standards, and processes

- Collaborate closely with peers on architecture, design, code reviews, and scaling strategies

THE SKILLSET YOU'LL BRING:

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, or another STEM discipline

- 7+ years of experience in backend, infrastructure, or data engineering roles

- Hands-on experience with event-time-based stream processing or streaming SQL systems using tools like Apache Flink, Kafka Streams, Beam, or similar

- Proficiency with relational and time-series databases like PostgreSQL, Druid, Pinot, TimescaleDB, or equiv...