Staff Software Engineer (Query Infrastructure)

Job-ID: 76b5c221-b12d-42ac-b710-2f8ea3b7bf6fLocation: San Francisco, California, United StatesEmployment type: FULL TIMEPosted: 2026-10-19Amplitude is the leading AI analytics platform, helping over 5,200 customers—including Atlassian, Burger King, NBCUniversal, and Square—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.As an organization, we deliver for our customers by living our values. We operate from a place of humility, take ownership of problems and successes, approach challenges with a growth mindset, and put our customers at the center of everything we do.The opportunityWe're entering a world where AI agents don't just assist product teams, they ship features, run experiments, and make prioritization calls autonomously. What makes that possible is agents' ability to verify their work against real product data continuously. 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 tens of thousands of agents and product teams worldwide.That makes Nova the critical infrastructure in the loop, and as non-stop agents become the main source of queries, the demand on Nova's throughput, correctness, and operational rigor grows dramatically.We're looking for a Staff 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, distributed compute, caching, and cloud infrastructure, and drive meaningful improvements to performance, cost-efficiency, and reliability. This role is ideal for someone who finds real satisfaction in making a complex distributed system faster, cheaper, and more reliable — and who wants to do that work on a system that directly powers the product experience for thousands of enterprise customers.The Impact you will deliverBuild the next generation of NovaOwn core components across query execution, columnar storage, and distributed compute.Design elastic query infrastructure for AI agents as first-class clients, targeting 10 query throughput with predictable performance and lower cost per query.Solve deep performance problems across engine internals and cloud infrastructure, from JVM and memory optimization to distributed execution.Own production reliability through on-call, incident investigation, and architectural improvements that prepare Nova for its next stage of growth.Shape what comes nextSet technical direction for major initiatives and lead them from proposal through production, with clear milestones and measurable results.Decide what to build, what to adopt, and how to evolve Nova for its next order of magnitude in scale.Work across engineering and product to set priorities and resolve trade-offs between capabilities, complexity, and cost.Help senior engineers take on larger technical problems through design reviews, debugging, and shared ownership.Who you areYou are a systems-minded engineer who:Gets energy from working inside complex distributed systems, finding bottlenecks, and making meaningful improvements.Has built or significantly extended a query engine, storage engine, or distributed data processing system.Makes sound trade-offs across performance, cost, correctness, and reliability, and builds support for technical decisions across teams.Helps engineers take on harder problems through design reviews and debugging, while staying open to new ideas and learning from others.Requirements8+ years of industry experience in backend or infrastructure engineering, with depth in distributed data systems.Hands-on experience building or extending analytical or OLAP systems: query engines, columnar storage, large-scale data processing or streaming frameworks, or equivalent.Track record of leading multi-month, cross-team technical projects from design through production, including significant cost or performance wins on cloud infrastructure.Strong computer science fundamentals: distributed systems (partitioning, replication, consistency, failover), data structures and algorithms, concurrency, performance optimization.Demonstrated technical influence beyond your immediate team: leading design discussions, driving cross-team alignment, mentoring engineers.Proficiency in Java, C++ or Python.Nice to haveExperience with query or OLAP systems such as Druid, ClickHouse, Presto/Trino, Spark, BigQuery or Snowflake.Experience with SQL planning and optimization, or with building SQL layers over heterogeneous storage.Familiarity with open table and columnar formats (Iceberg, Parquet, Arrow, ORC) and warehouse-native architectures.Familiarity with product analytics, experimentation platforms, event-driven data systems, or serving data to LLM and agent workloads.Amplitude provides equal employment opportunities (EEO). All applicants are considered without regards to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, or sexual orientation.This role is eligible for equity, benefits and other forms of compensation.Based on Colorado law, the following details are for individuals who will work for Amplitude in Colorado. Colorado range: $198,000 - $299,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)Based on legislation in New York City, the following details are for individuals who will work for Amplitude in New York City. New York City salary range: $220,000 - $331,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)Based on legislation in California, the following details are for individuals who will work for Amplitude in San Francisco Bay Area of California. Salary range: $220,000 - $331,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)Based on legislation in California, the following details are for individuals who will work for Amplitude in California outside of the San Francisco Bay Area. California salary range: $198,000 - $299,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)Based on legislation in Washington state, the following details are for individuals who will work for Amplitude in Washington state. Washington salary range: $198,000 - $299,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)Based on legislation in Washington state, the following details are for individuals who will work for Amplitude in Washington only: unlimited PTO, 10 to 13 holidays annually (will vary), medical dental and vision PPO and CDHP plans. Finally, a company sponsored 401(k) retirement plan.Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.#LI-HybridOur values:At Amplitude, our values guide how we show up for one another and for our customers:Humility: We operate from a place of empathy and openness, seeking to understand many points of view.Ownership: We take the initiative to solve problems that drive our shared company success.Growth Mindset: We’re tenacious in the face of challenges and seek feedback in order to grow ourselves and others.Customer Centricity: We put the customer at the center of everything we do and are deeply committed to their success.We care about the well-being of our team: We offer competitive pay and benefits packages that reflect our commitment to the health and well-being of our Ampliteers.Some of our benefit programs include:Excellent ​M​edical, ​D​ental and ​V​ision insurance coverages, with 100% employer-paid premiums for employee Medical, ​Dental,​ ​​​​​​​​Vision on select plans401(k) retirement plan with an employer match of up to 1% of your eligible pay each pay period up to $2,000 annuallyFlexible time off, ​p​aid holidays, and moreGenerous stipends to spend on what matters most to you, whether that’s wellness (monthly), commuter transit/parking (monthly), learning and development (quarterly), new hire home office equipment, and much moreExcellent Parental benefits including​:​ 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave, Carrot Fertility Benefits/Adoption/Surrogacy support, Back-up Child Care supportMental health and wellness benefits including no cost employee access to Modern Health coaching & therapy sessionsEmployee Stock Purchase Program​ (ESPP)Other fun facts about Amplitude:Our customers love us! They've said we're the #1 product analytics solution for 23 quarters in a row on G2.We care a lot about product innovation. We've made significant investments in talent and infrastructure to build the most powerful AI analytics platform on the market.We invest in our people. We offer mentorship programs, management training, and wellness initiatives.We give back to our communities. We give every Ampliteer a charitable giving grant and paid volunteer time off.We were founded in 2012, went public via a direct listing in September 2021, and are now trading under the ticker $AMPL.We’re a global and fast-growing team! We have employees around the world and offices in San Francisco (HQ), New York, Vancouver, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Singapore, and Tokyo.Our mascot is Data Monster, who loves to chow down on numbers, charts, and graphs. Nom nom.By applying for this job, you acknowledge that Amplitude processes your personal data in accordance with the Amplitude Applicant Privacy Notice.