Infrastructure Software Engineer, Metadata

About the role

PLEASE READ:
Zones are based on your zip code. If you’re within 100 miles of a listed metro area (straight‑line radius), you’re included in that Zone. For this role, we are hiring in Zones 2 and 3. Check your Zone before applying.

As a Software Engineer on the Metadata team, you’ll build and operate the large‑scale distributed databases that every Dropbox service depends on. Metadata systems are mission‑critical, in the live path for all user operations and must meet stringent requirements for latency, durability, and transactional consistency. You’ll design and evolve the core infrastructure that manages Dropbox’s databases at scale, enabling fast, reliable access to data for millions of users and hundreds of internal services.

This work spans distributed systems, replication, caching, and transactional database systems. You’ll collaborate closely with engineers across Infrastructure and Product teams to ensure the metadata layer meets business needs and continues to scale with Dropbox’s growth. This is an opportunity to leverage your expertise in distributed systems and grow into broader technical leadership.

• Design and maintain distributed database systems providing low‑latency, strongly consistent data access.
• Implement and optimise replication, consensus, and caching mechanisms to meet availability and performance goals.
• Operate production systems, including participating in the on‑call rotation, ensuring high availability and data durability.
• Collaborate with infrastructure and product teams to assess current and future use cases and requirements, supporting the development of a mid‑to‑long‑term roadmap that reflects these needs.
• Contribute to system design reviews, post‑mortems, and reliability improvements.
• Write high‑quality, efficient code in Go and Rust for performance‑critical systems.

• 5+ years of experience designing and implementing software using distributed systems fundamentals: replication, consistency, partitioning, and fault tolerance.
• Experience building databases, storage systems, or large‑scale data infrastructure.
• Proficiency in Go, Rust, C++ or similar systems languages.
• Familiarity with consensus and coordination systems (e.g. Raft, Paxos, Zoo Keeper, etcd).
• Experience operating production services and participating in on‑call rotations.
• Strong debugging and performance analysis skills.
• Excellent collaboration and communication abilities across teams.

• Experience building distributed databases or storage systems.
• Practical experience with and deep understanding of data structures used in storage systems (e.g. LSM trees, B‑trees, Hash Indexes).
• Experience operating database systems (e.g. MySQL, Postgres, Cassandra).
• Experience with distributed caching, either custom built or operating open source options such as Memcached or Redis.
• Experience improving reliability and performance in high‑scale data systems.
• Experience working with cross‑functional teams to understand their current use cases, identify future needs and requirements, and incorporate them into the team’s roadmap.
• Interest in deepening distributed systems expertise and expanding technical leadership.

US Zone 1:
This role is not available in Zone 1

US Zone 2: $177,500‑$240,100 USD

US Zone 3: $157,800‑$213,400 USD

The range(s) listed above is the expected annual salary/OTE (On‑Target Earnings) for this role, subject to change. Please note, OTE are for sales roles only. Salary/OTE is just one component of Dropbox’s total rewards package. All regular employees are also eligible for the corporate bonus program or a sales incentive (target included in OTE) as well as stock in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).

Dropbox takes a number of factors into account when determining individual starting pay, including job and level they are hired into, location/metropolitan area, skillset, and peer compensation. We target most new hire offers between the minimum up to the middle of the range. Dropbox uses the zip code of an employee’s remote work location to determine which metropolitan pay range we use.

Current US Zone locations are as…