Software Engineer; lead

• Location: San Francisco Bay Area (Remote OK with up to 30% travel, primarily to the Bay Area)
• Compensation: $180,000-$250,000 base + generous equity + benefits
• Experience: 7+ years

Datastrato, the original creator of Apache Gravitino, is building the open metadata platform for the AI era, increasingly critical as enterprises endeavor to deploy AI and AI agents  by prominent open source leaders with deep expertise in data infra/large-scale distributed systems and Silicon Valley veterans, in just over 2 years, we have built a compelling product, cultivated a vibrant open source community (Apple, Pinterest, Roku, Tencent, Uber, etc), and signed enterprises including 2 of the top 20 US Internet companies as paying customers.

We’re defining the next generation of data infrastructure for AI and are well-positioned to emerge as a category leader.

• Lead architectural design and implementation of major components in Apache Gravitino and Datastrato’s commercial offerings
• Build and optimize high-performance, scalable systems across metadata management, storage, and distributed compute engines, and clouds;
  Contribute to and help shape relevant open source projects
• Drive technical direction, mentor engineers, and influence cross-team architecture decisions
• Engage with customers (typically top tech companies), engineering leaders, and the broader data and AI community, including speaking at industry events

• 7+ years in building large-scale distributed systems, including experience as a tech lead
• Strong foundation in CS, systems design and programming, data and AI infrastructure technologies, especially OSS such as Iceberg, Spark, Gravitino, Trino, vLLM, Daft
• Proficiency in at least one systems language (Java, Go, C++, Rust) and solid Linux/OS fundamentals
• Track record of meaningful open-source contributions

• Experience at early-stage data or AI infrastructure, or developer-first startups and top tech companies
• Experience with database/data engine internals (query execution, transactions, storage), lakehouse technologies (Iceberg, Hudi) and metadata/governance systems
• Familiarity with modern AI infrastructure, LLMs, or AI agent systems
• Technical writing, developer evangelism, or community engagement experience