Senior Software EngineerSan Francisco, CA

Amplitude is the leading AI analytics platform, helping over 4,700 customers—including Atlassian, Burger King, NBCUniversal, and Square—to build better products and digital experiences. With powerful AI Agents embedded across our platform, teams can analyze, test, and optimize user experiences faster than ever. Ranked #1 across multiple categories in G2’s Winter 2026 Report, Amplitude is the best‑in‑class solution for product, data, and marketing teams. Learn more at amplitude.com. Amplitude’s Commitment to Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DEI) Amplitude believes that diversity enables the creation of better products, improves the ability to solve complex problems, and drives more powerful solutions. We strive to create an environment of inclusion—one focused on psychological safety, empathy, and human connection—that will allow employees of all backgrounds to thrive. About The Role & Team Every AI insight, every experiment, every cohort at Amplitude starts with a query. Our in‑house OLAP engine, Nova, processes trillions of events in real time—turning raw behavioral data into fast, trustworthy answers that power decisions for thousands of product teams worldwide. We’re entering a world where AI agents don’t just assist product teams—they ship features, run experiments, and make prioritization calls autonomously. The demand on Nova’s throughput, correctness, and operational rigor grows dramatically as these agents become the main source of queries. We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer who wants to go deep on the engine internals and the infrastructure underneath. You’ll own significant components of a modern OLAP system—across query execution, columnar storage and encoding, distributed compute, caching, and cloud infrastructure—and drive meaningful improvements to performance, cost‑efficiency, and reliability. You’ll grow your technical influence through the quality of your code, your design contributions, and your collaboration with other engineers on a team of about ten. What You’ll Do Build and Improve Core Query Engine Components Contribute across Nova’s query execution engine and distributed compute layer: query planning, columnar storage formats, encoding and compression, caching, and cluster‑level resource management. Implement new capabilities as Nova expands to support more warehouse‑imported data types, such as metrics, profiles, and dimensions. Help ensure Nova’s components support high‑throughput automated query workloads—building for sustained, concurrent, and programmatic query patterns at scale. Improve Cost and Performance Own and execute projects that reduce infrastructure cost—compute, storage, network, and memory—while maintaining or improving latency and throughput. Profile and optimize JVM performance: GC tuning, memory management, concurrency, and data layout decisions. Build guardrails and observability to catch expensive or pathological queries before they impact the system. Contribute to Reliability and Operational Excellence Strengthen Nova’s reliability posture in the components you own: identify failure modes, drive durable fixes, and raise the bar on how we detect and respond to production issues. Participate in on‑call rotation to root‑cause incidents and turn one‑off fixes into lasting improvements. Contribute to capacity planning, safe rollout practices, and the operational tooling that keeps Nova healthy. Grow Through Technical Contribution Lead the design and execution of multi‑week to multi‑month projects within your area of ownership. Contribute to technical direction through design docs, architecture discussions, and code reviews. Pair with and learn from senior and staff engineers on the team; share what you learn with peers. Collaborate with Product, Middleware, Data Pipeline, and other engineering teams to ensure Nova’s capabilities translate into customer value. Who You Are Gets energy from working inside a complex distributed system—understanding how data flows through it, where the bottlenecks are, and how to make it meaningfully better. Has hands‑on experience building or extending distributed data systems—query engines, columnar storage, streaming or batch data processing frameworks, storage engines, or equivalent. Thinks about cost, performance, and reliability as interconnected concerns, not separate workstreams. Communicates clearly about technical tradeoffs and is eager to grow your influence through the quality of your work and ideas. Enjoys learning from teammates—and helping others through pairing, design reviews, or explaining the “why” behind a system’s design. Qualifications Requirements 3+ years of industry experience in backend or infrastructure engineering, with exposure to distributed data systems. Hands‑on experience building or extending distributed data systems—query engines, columnar storage, large‑scale data processing frameworks, streaming systems, storage engines, or equivalent. Experience improving cost or performance on cloud infrastructure (compute, storage, network). Strong computer science fundamentals: distributed systems (partitioning, replication, consistency, failover), data structures and algorithms, concurrency and multi‑threading, performance optimization. Production experience with modern cloud infrastructure—AWS (S3, DynamoDB, EC2), Kafka, Redis/ElastiCache, Kubernetes, Terraform—or strong equivalents. Proficiency in Java, C++, or Python. Demonstrated ability to own and ship significant pieces of complex systems, and to collaborate effectively with engineers and partner teams. Nice to Have Experience with specific OLAP or query engine systems: Druid, ClickHouse, Presto/Trino, BigQuery, Snowflake, or similar. JVM expertise—GC tuning, profiling, memory optimization. Experience with columnar data formats and encodings (Arrow, Parquet, ORC, or custom formats). Familiarity with product analytics, experimentation platforms, or event‑driven data systems. Contributions to open‑source data infrastructure projects or published work in the data systems space. Benefits Excellent medical, dental, and vision insurance coverages with 100% employer‑paid premiums for selected plans. 401(k) retirement plan with an employer match of up to 1% of eligible pay. Flexible time off, paid holidays, and more. Generous stipends for wellness, commuter transit/parking, learning and development, new‑hire home office equipment, and more. Excellent parental benefits including paid parental leave, fertility benefits, adoption/surrogacy support, and backup child‑care support. Mental health and wellness benefits with no‑cost access to coaching and therapy sessions. Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP). Equal Employment Opportunity Amplitude provides equal employment opportunities (EEO). All applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, or sexual orientation. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. This role is eligible for equity, benefits and other forms of compensation. Compensation Based on Colorado law, the following details apply for individuals who will work for Amplitude in Colorado: $165,000 – $247,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission). Based on legislation in New York City, the following details apply for individuals who will work for Amplitude in New York City: $183,000 – $276,000 total target cash. Based on legislation in California, for residents in the San Francisco Bay Area: $183,000 – $276,000 total target cash; outside of the Bay Area: $165,000 – $247,000 total target cash. Based on legislation in Washington state: $165,000 – $247,000 total target cash; unlimited PTO, 10 to 13 holidays annually (varying), medical, dental, and vision PPO and CDHP plans. Recruitment Safety Notice Staying Safe - Protect Yourself From Recruitment Fraud. We are aware of individuals and entities fraudulently representing themselves as Amplitude recruiters and/or hiring managers. Amplitude will never ask for financial information or payment, or for personal information such as bank account number or social security number during the job application or interview process. Any emails from the Amplitude recruiting team will come from an @amplitude.com email address. Please refer to the associated article for more information. If something feels suspicious, cease communications. #J-18808-Ljbffr Amplitude Software Co