Senior Software Engineer — Data Catalog / Ingestion

ABOUT OUR CLIENT

Our client is a leading enterprise data platform company building an open, high-performance data lakehouse for AI and analytical workloads. The platform combines an intelligent SQL query engine, an AI-ready semantic layer, and an open catalog built on Apache Iceberg — enabling Fortune 500 companies across finance, energy, manufacturing, and logistics to unify, query, and govern data at massive scale across cloud and on-premise sources.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer for the data catalog and enterprise data management layer of a large-scale lakehouse platform — the services that automate data ingestion and autonomously optimize Apache Iceberg tables. You will own features through the full development cycle, from design through deployment, in a multithreaded, distributed environment where scalability, performance, and always-on availability are the baseline expectations.

This is a systems-level, backend engineering role focused on data infrastructure internals — not application development or CRUD services.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own the full software development cycle — inception, design, development, testing, deployment — for catalog and data-management services
• Build and operate services for automated ingestion and autonomous optimization of Apache Iceberg tables
• Reason about concurrency and parallelization to deliver scalability and performance in multithreaded, distributed systems
• Drive performance tuning and system-efficiency improvements
• Work with Apache Foundation open-source projects, contributing upstream where agreed
• Participate in code and design reviews, upholding a high engineering bar
• Collaborate with product managers, support teams, and solution architects on feature requests and design updates
• Partner with US-based engineering leads on technical decisions

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• B.S., M.S., or PhD in Computer Science or a related field
• 5+ years of software engineering experience, preferably focused on database systems or related fields
• Strong object-oriented programming skills in Java or C++
• Solid grounding in data structures and algorithms
• Hands-on experience with multithreaded and asynchronous programming patterns for scalable, performant systems
• A passion for engineering quality — zero-downtime upgrades, availability, resiliency, and uptime as first-class concerns
• Comfort with a fast-moving environment; strong ownership; the confidence to defend a technical position and the openness to be mentored
• Comfortable with AI-assisted development workflows — using modern AI tools productively while critically validating their output
• English Upper-Intermediate or higher (B2+) — daily written and verbal communication with a US-based engineering team
• Availability to work EU business hours shifted 2–3 hours later for daily overlap with US West Coast mornings

DESIRED SKILLS

• Database internals and query planning
• Distributed systems: concurrency control, data replication, storage systems
• Apache Iceberg or other open table formats (Delta Lake, Hudi)
• Messaging systems: Kafka, NATS, or cloud pub/sub services
• Contributions to open-source data infrastructure (Apache projects especially valued)

DETAILS

• Engagement: Long-term contract
• Location: Europe (EU / EEA / UK), remote
• Working hours: EU business hours, shifted 2–3 hours later for daily overlap with the US West Coast team