Senior Software Engineer (San Francisco)

At Sift, were redefining how modern machines are built, tested, and operated. Our platform gives engineers real-time observability over high-frequency telemetryeliminating bottlenecks and enabling faster, more reliable development.

Sift was born from our work at SpaceX on Dragon, Falcon, Starlink, and Starshipwhere 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 at Sift, you wont just write codeyoull help define the architecture, shape the product, and influence the culture of a company focused on solving real engineering problems. If youre looking for complex technical challenges and the opportunity to build foundational systems supporting complex machines from the ground up, we want to hear from you.

In This Role, You'll:

• Design and build a high-performance, scalable, end-to-end data platform for hardware engineering

• Design and build a delightful user interface for visualizing and transforming millions of data points

• Work closely with customers, including hardware engineers, to understand their problems and find efficient solutions

• Help define engineering culture, standards, and processes

• Collaborate with peers on architecture, design, and code reviews
  

The Skillset You'll Bring:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, engineering, math, physics, or STEM discipline

• 8+ years of experience in software engineering or data engineering

• Experience designing and building large-scale, distributed systems or web applications using Go, Python, or an equivalent language

• Self-starter, able to navigate ambiguity and changing priorities

• Team player with excellent communication skills and a collaborative work ethic
  

Bonus Points:

• Experience working with in-stream data processing and analytics using Apache Kafka, Flink, Beam, or similar

• Experience with relational and non-relational databases, e.g. PostgreSQL, Druid, Pinot, Timescale, or similar

• Experience with data exploration tools like Grafana, Jupyter Notebooks, Metabase, PowerBI, or similar

• Strong understanding of DevOps principles: version control, testing, continuous integration, build, deployment, and monitoring

• Front-end experience in React or a similar JavaScript framework
  

Engineering At Sift:

You'll have the opportunity to help evolve and scale our platform because we're still in the early stages of building the product. Relevant technologies include:

• Web frontend & backend: ECharts, Go, gRPC, PostgreSQL, Protobuf, Radix, React, Redux, and TypeScript

• Data : Arrow, DataFusion, Flink, Parquet, and Rust

• Infrastructure: Argo CD, AWS, Docker, GitHub Actions, Grafana, Kubernetes, Kustomize, Linux, Prometheus, and Terragrunt
  

Location:

The Sift team is based in El Segundo, CA, and we collaborate in person twice a weekMondays and Thursdays. We work closely with LAs leading hardware companies, from autonomous vehicle manufacturers to spacecraft builders. Proximity matters for site visits and deep collaboration, so we prefer candidates local to Los Angeles. We are open to relocation and for exceptional talent were open to remote work from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Salary range: $170,000 - $220,000 per year. Plus equity and benefits.

Eligibility:

US Person Required : Must be a U.S. Citizen or Green Card Holder due to ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) / EAR (Export Administration Regulations) compliance requirements.